Labor still peddling false FTTP-on-demand costs

news Labor politicians around the nation are continuing to claim that the Coalition’s rival National Broadband Network policy requires Australians to pay $5,000 or be left with current broadband speeds on the existing copper network, despite the allegation having been comprehensive debunked by fact-checking sites like Politifact.

The Coalition’s rival NBN policy, unveiled in mid-April this year, will see most of Australia covered by fibre to the node technology, where fibre is extended from telephone exchanges to neighbourhood ‘nodes’. The existing copper network will be used to deliver the last mile to home and business premises, but the rollout is expected to significantly boost broadband speeds and availability, with the Coalition pledging minimum speeds of 25Mbps by the end of its third year in office, if it wins the upcoming Federal Election.

Subject to certain conditions, one additional feature of the policy will see the Coalition offer Australians the choice to upgrade their connection to fibre to the premises as under Labor’s existing NBN policy. The Coalition believes it will be possible to offer this kind of service on a similar basis as it is offered in the UK, where wholesale telco OpenReach is offering so-called ‘fibre on demand’ extension services at a price depending on how far premises are from their nearby node.

According to OpenReach’s price list, costs for the fibre extension service include a £500 (AU$823) initial connection fee and ‘annual rental’ cost of £465 (AU$765), plus a specific charge ranging from £200 (AU$329) up to £3,500 (AU$5,762), depending on the distance premises are from local nodes.

Throughout May, this led a number of Australian Labor politicians, including then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard and then-Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, to claim that the cost of the Coalition’s FTTP on demand service will be $5,000, with the implication that unless Australians pay for this fibre extension cost, they will be getting broadband little better than that offered today on Telstra’s existing copper network.

However, the Coalition has strongly contested the claim, and in May, local fact-checking site Politifact agreed with Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull that the claim wasn’t true.

Additionally, OpenReach’s site states: “Premises are on average around 500m away from an NGA Aggregation Node and will incur a charge of around a £1,000. Those that are closer will face a lesser charge and those further away a higher one. This is in addition to an installation fee of £500 for the service.”

The Coalition has set a speed minimum of 25Mbps for its FTTN network rollout. Consequently, the Coalition is assuming (although it believes it will ultimately be a matter for NBN Co to decide) that the maximum copper length in its FTTN network rollout will be between 750m ad 850 from local neighbourhood nodes. In OpenReach’s pricing schematic, this would translate to between £1,400 and £1,800 (AU$2,304 to AU$2,963) for the fibre extension cost, plus the additional £500 (AU$823) connection cost, making Labor’s statement that the cost of the Coalition’s FTTP on demand service will be, or will be on average, $5,000, inaccurate.

However, Labor politicians continue to make the claim.

In an interview with West Coast Radio published on 27 June, then-Communications Minister Stephn Conroy made the following claim: “Tony Abbott keeps referring to things done in England to give the public an idea of how fibre to the node would work; and they’ve said it will cost thousands of dollars,” Mr Conroy said. “Of course it all depends on how far away you live from the ‘node’. It works out to be about $5000 Australian on average.”

In addition, Labor Senator Helen Polley recently authorised the following advertisement to be placed in newspapers in Tasmania. It claims that under Labor’s NBN policy, connection to the NBN will be “free”, while under the Coalition policy, “You pay up to $5,000, or you’re left on the old, slow copper network.”

Polley’s advertisement is misleading in that it implies Australians who don’t pay up to $5,000 for the Coalition’s fibre extension option would not see any improvement in broadband speeds. However, this isn’t true; the fibre to the node rollout proposed by the Coalition would see minimum speeds boosted to 25Mbps. Most Australians who are able to get ADSL broadband can only access speeds much slower (usually below 16Mbps or so, even if they are close to their local telephone exchange) over the copper. In addition, the 25Mbps figure is only a minimum — the Coalition expects real-world speeds to be higher for many Australians.

Turnbull has complained to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on the issue, alleging that the Australian Government, through its ministers’ statements about the NBN being “free”, had contravened the Competition and Consumer Act, which prohibits organisations from making misleading or deceptive conduct.

opinion/analysis
It pains me to say it, but the Coalition is completely right to feel like Labor is unfairly taking the electorate for a ride here. Many of the statements and advertisements being put out by Labor politicians at the moment drastically misrepresent the Coalition’s NBN policy and even Labor’s own NBN policy. Despite the fact that senior Labor politicians such as Stephen Conroy would clearly be aware of the nuances of both policies, they continue to make misstatements that mislead Australians about the issues.

Conroy’s statement in particular in late June about the “average” cost of FTTP on demand being $5,000 can clearly be labelled as a deliberate lie on the part of the then-Communications Minister. Conroy is one of the most educated and qualified individuals in Australia on the nuances of the NBN debate; and it is very clear that the then-Minister would have been aware that the $5,000 claim represents the upper limit of OpenReach’s FTTP on demand costs, not the “average”. In this sense, it is possible to establish both awareness of the truth and intent to deceive — the conditions for establishing a lie by a politician.

It is also disturbing that Conroy appears to have done nothing to combat the deliberately misleading advertisements which Labor is publishing around Australia with respect to the various policies. Polley’s ad isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of propaganda from Labor about the NBN; far from it. In fact, it’s my impression that it is likely, given the similarity of many of these ads, that Conroy’s office, when he was the Minister up until last week, probably collaborated in setting Labor’s central political messaging on this issue. Not only did the then-Minister appear to not do anything to stop these misleading statements being made in public; it appears likely that he may have contributed to the misleading dialogue going on.

But that doesn’t excuse Labor’s work here. If the party wants to regain some of the respectability it has lost over the past several years (remembering especially the broken promises generally, corruption in the NSW Labor Party and divisive politics it has partaken of, then a good place to start would be to clean up its act in terms of how it communicates with the public on core policies such as the NBN. The Australian public isn’t stupid. It knows a whopper when it sees one.

481 COMMENTS

While I agree that the use of $5000 versus free is about as accurate as the LNP Policy Document costings of the NBN – the impact has been far less. The media has taken the LNP figures as gospel and performed similar analysis as above on the ALP figures being used.

Doesn’t make it right – and the ALP should pull their head in. Likewise, I expect far more hard questions of the Hon. Tony Abbott (when he’s not running away from press conferences) and the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull on their policy document. Particularly over this:

The Coalition has set a speed minimum of 25Mbps for its FTTN network rollout.

Who takes this as a core guarantee of speed? Why hasn’t this been explored more? What happens if that minimum benchmark fails – is that the point at which an upgrade is required to FTTN?

To claim that there will be a minimum speed (which way? Up? Down? Combined? Both?) of 25Mbps on the current copper network requires a fallback position if the network cannot (as many technical experts – “tech heads” if you will – have pointed out is the likely scenario).

the Coalition has set a minimum of 25Mbps download speeds across FTTN. That is the policy which they will task NBN Co with enacting. Given what’s going on overseas, and speaking to local telco people, it’s pretty clear that the only issue in achieving that speed will be the distance of premises from the node. Turnbull’s office has a good estimate of that, but obviously it will vary in each case, and NBN Co will be the arbiter of deciding where the node should sit to deliver those speeds. The Coalition has acknowledged that fibre further out and closer to premises will be needed in some cases where the copper is not great.

It’s not a guarantee, it’s an election promise. It’s only a guarantee if it is guaranteed against something. It is not just a factor of distance, it is also affected by the diameter of the copper, the quality of the copper, the amount of corrosion in the copper (if any), potential interference, and the number of joins in the copper. Suggesting that everyone within X meters of a Node will receive 25mbps minimum is overly simplistic and factually incorrect. Suggesting that there aren’t tremendous challenges inherent in a policy promising 25mbps over FTTN VDSL is disingenuous, as is trying to convince the public that comparable performance has been achieved on overseas networks (it hasn’t).

The 25mbps guarantee isn’t a guarantee until it is enshrined in legislation as a minimum performance standard. It isn’t even the promise of a guarantee until the LNP commit to such legislative changes and can demonstrate bipartisan support for the proposal. As the LNP aren’t in power, the only other way they can guarantee it is to guarantee it against something they do have control over, such as personal undertakings from senior politicians like Abbot, Turnbull and Hockey to resign/retire if the 25mbps minimum is not met. THAT is a guarantee, and one people might actually take seriously.

Trevor, couldn’t have said it better myself. NBNCo’s 25Mbps (equivalent service) is guaranteed, on a technical level. They even guarantee far above that if you order it. The technology ensures that guarantee.

The Coalition’s guarantee is nothing more than a hope that it isn’t too expensive to do so on a technology that is more than technically capable but does NOT guarantee every line will receive 25Mbps.

I dont understand why Renai has always believed that the Coalitions 25Mbps is equally as likely as NBNCo’s?

I have no idea why people are so obsessed with this idea of the “guarantee”. Turnbull has done extensive research on this, in Australia and overseas, and has stated clearly in the Coalition’s policy that 25Mbps is the Coalition’s minimum speed. He has also stated that where such issues with the copper exist that 25Mbps will not be possible in a normal length between the node and the premise, that the fibre will be extended closer to the premise to ensure 25Mbps.

What is so hard to understand about that? And how is that not a “guarantee”?

Look, I’ve spent a decade fact-checking political and industry bullshit on technical matters. Turnbull is not just making this shit up. There is more than enough evidence to suggest the Coalition’s policy is achievable. I would remind people that it won’t just be Australia doing FTTN in a vacuum … it’s being rolled out across the entirety of the UK!

Because Renai Australia deserves better than to be stuck on connections like yours that AREN’T guaranteed. And Turnbull has done a lot of work. A lot of work about how it would be possible to guarantee it. But what he HASN’T admitted is how long that would take and how much it would cost.

The NBN guarantees these speeds by default with nothing else than laying fibre. Yes, it is behind schedule, but it still guarantees these speeds as a matter of course. The Coalition policy requires work to do so. How much work, how long it will take and what it will cost are very much an unknown. ThHAT is why I take issue with this guarantee.

Ok, well that is a guarantee. Not the most efficient or cost effective way of guaranteeing 25mbps but a guarantee none the less… I find myself agreeing with seven here though. Time and cost an issue. The coalition remind us every day.

4. Mini nodes. This in itself highlight’s Turnbull’s flippant “Thought Bubble” approach to his “policy” How many of these things are needed? How much will they cost? Again the cost of the TBN can only increase.

The word “guarantee” isn’t even mentioned in his policy document, how did Malcolm convince people to argue “guaranteed” on his behalf?

I have no doubt many people will get 25Mbps (in fact some may get better even), but I also have no doubt there will also be an insignificant number that wont. it’s mostly a physics/science issue, copper is inherently unreliable (you can have partial connections with copper, which effects endpoint throughput, fibre either works as advertised, or it doesn’t work at all), especially when mixed with water.

“Turnbull has done extensive research on this, in Australia and overseas, and has stated clearly in the Coalition’s policy that 25Mbps is the Coalition’s minimum speed. He has also stated that where such issues with the copper exist that 25Mbps will not be possible in a normal length between the node and the premise, that the fibre will be extended closer to the premise to ensure 25Mbps.

What is so hard to understand about that? And how is that not a “guarantee”?

Look, I’ve spent a decade fact-checking political and industry bullshit on technical matters. Turnbull is not just making this shit up.”

Their commitment is for a minimum 25Mbps until 2016, then a minimum of 50Mbps after that. If as you say this is completely achievable then why not give a solid commitment to enshrine it in legislation? They have nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing that don’t they? Implicitly saying that “it is possible to achieve these speeds but that I won’t be held to it” doesn’t really fill me with confidence.

But yes, precisely – Renai is unsure why people are ‘obsessed’ with the idea of the ‘guarantee’; I keep raising it because Mr Turnbull raised the spectre of the guarantee by invoking it, but has subsequent failed to provide us with any such thing. This is a man (and a party) with a strong, consistent track record of obfuscating facts, misleading the public and being flagrantly dishonest on the topic of the NBN, for years now. What kind of morons would we be if after all that we decided to just take him at his word? Dogs bark, frogs hop, snakes bite; Mr Turnbull and the LNP have shown their spots, so of course, as reasonable people we no longer take them at their word when they have a history of dishonesty and changing their stance whenever it suits them – we now demand evidence, we now demand meaningful guarantees. Particularly when it is the politicians themselves that use term ‘guarantee’. Sorry, but if you say something is guaranteed, I want a guarantee. Not political weasel words.
If the LNP attain power later this year and after an extensive delay their FTTN network lurches to life and by 2016 less than a quarter of people are actually connected at 25mbps and Turnbull makes a statement that it turns out providing that speed to everyone will triple the cost of the network, so they’re not going to do it, what actual penalties are there? What leverage or power do the public gave to hold them to their so-called ‘guarantee’? Even if they resign, where does that leave us?

I don’t know about you, but if someone promises me something important, I get it in writing. The NBN is about as important a project and a national decision as there is likely to be. So excuse me for not taking LNP’ guarantees’ at face value when they haven’t so much as stacked anything up as collateral against that guarantee, when it currently amounts to no more than an election promise with zero penalties for non-implementation. It’s obviously, clearly, fundamentally and obstensively NOT a guarantee. Go and look the f#&@ing word up.

““Turnbull has done extensive research on this, in Australia and overseas, and has stated clearly in the Coalition’s policy that 25Mbps is the Coalition’s minimum speed.”

I find that impossible to believe given that BT’s system which he used in pronouncements as comparable provides a minimum capability of 25Mb/s but a minimum guaranteed (what the customer ACTUALLY gets) of 2Mb/s and is still over budget and behind schedule.

“Turnbull has done extensive research on this, in Australia and overseas”

Clearly it can’t have been any of the people doing the FTTN rolout’s he has given as an example.

First it was New Zealand, but they abandoned FTTN in favour of FTTP before finishing and never get a mention.

It can’t have been British Telecom because their former CTO is telling everyone lodly and clearly that it was a huge mistake. The links I posted above detail how it is over budget, behind schedule and failing to deliver the promised service.

It can’t be Deutsche Telekom because they actually canvass new roll-out areas prior to building.
If more than 80% are “interested” in fibre and at least 10% are prepared to sign up before construction starts, they will roll out FTTP rather than FTTN because it is more cost effective. All surveys in Australia to-date show 80% or better want access to the speeds and take-up will of course eventually be 100% here due to the planned shut-down of copper.http://www.telekom.com/media/company/133040

Would “or you’re left using the worst part of the old slow copper network.” been any better?

Whilst it is disappointing the ALP are resorting to such tactics, I am surprised it has taken them this long to do so given what they have faced every day for the last 4 – 5 years from Abbott and co.

As for the comments stating “up to $5000”, really?.. come on… Is the difference between approx 4k to 5k really enough to be calling it out as a misrepresentation rather than a slight exaggeration. This is a kin to splitting hairs as it may be more expensive than 4k anyway.

Before calling shenanigans on the part of the ALP i would want to know the difference in wages between UK fibre installers and those in Austraila? Are the majority of household lines in the UK direct buried or do they run in conduit? Any additional hardware required to be purchased for the household,

“Conroy stated that the “average” was $5k – which is demonstrably incorrect.”

Actually, since no prices have been given for a FoD upgrade in Australia, it’s pretty hard to know what the price will be. You can point at the UK, but they have shorter distances to the node. Just saying. If they want to act horrified by the prices being quoted for upgrades they should really put some estimates in, if only to be held accountable if they are way higher.

I 100% agree with you on Conroy’s statement. Calling it an average can pretty conclusively be called a lie at this stage. However my previous comments were in relation to the “up to” statement which I see as pretty innocent. In context of the many lies we have seen so far regarding the NBN, Polley’s comment pales in comparison to the claims of blowouts to the tune of $94 Billion.

“Conroy stated that the “average” was $5k – which is demonstrably incorrect.”

Demonstrable how? The exchange rate between GBP and AUD is at an unusual low and has been for a few years now. If it was at 3:1 which it was about 10 years ago we’d be talking about a range of $1500 to $10500 and $5000 is almost right smack bang in the middle. What I’m trying to point out is that using the UK price figures doesn’t translate to the Australian situation at all. Until the coalition tell us how much it’ll cost then no one can say. If they’re upset about Labor saying it’ll be $5k on average well they should just come out and tell us what it would be because to be honest it would not surprise me if that figure was accurate.

Also the politifact site debunked Julia Gillards $5k figure because she omitted the ‘up to’ qualifier, not because it is an inaccurate figure.

But legislation, regulations, labour rates and insurance premiums ARE good points to make when it comes to civil costs of running fibre. They are VASTLY different in Australia and I’d not be leaning very far to say we are considerably more expensive here. Labour rates alone count for that.

So, again, I don’t see how arguing that $5K as an average is definitely a lie when the costs being used to SAY it’s a lie aren’t even comparable to Australia??

You’re right — the costs are variable, and that’s a worthwhile argument to have. But Labor’s not arguing that — it’s taking figures straight from BT’s OpenReach figures, and porting them wholesale into the Australian debate. I wouldn’t object to an intelligent argument from Labor arguing that the costs could rise in Australia, if they gave the reasons why. But what we’re getting is a blanket statement taking a top-end example from the UK and saying that it *will* apply in Australia, without any intelligent argument as to why.

I’ll be outlaying my opinion on this issue — with the kind of intelligent argument which we would all prefer — next week.

Yes, you’re right. Labour are. And they shouldn’t be. They have enough other things to criticise the LNP policy without resorting to mistruths etc. But all I meant was, Turnbull is doing EXACTLY the same- porting BT’s figures direct to show it WON’T cost $5k.

Neither are right. I just feel reporting Labor are lying that it will be $5k average because BT’s are and using Turnbull’s argument that BT report many pay less as evidence they’re lying….is rather self-serving.

Sorry, but Turnbull’s *not* doing the same thing. During the development of the Coalition’s policy, his guys put together a comprehensive model for how FTTN would work in Australia, drawing on international examples and with access to local data from Telstra and other telcos etc. When it comes to FTTN, Turnbull does have the reference material to back up what he’s saying, and it’s been a rare case indeed where I’ve been able to prove his guys wrong on something like that. He’s done his homework. He is a lot more informed than anyone in Labor when it comes to FTTN.

Is he going to put all that data out there? No. Some of it’s confidential, and it’s all in context — Labor would tear such a thing to shreds.

In comparison, Labor has merely taken that same $5k figure from BT OpenReach and pumped it around every miserable low-life MP/Senator marketing campaign around Australia, probably upon direction from Conroy’s office.

I wouldn’t have a problem if the Labor literature said stuff like: “If you want fibre to the premises, under the Coalition’s policy you’ll be paying an extra $800 to $6,000 to get it hooked up. You won’t pay that fee under Labor.”

That’s just the facts.

But that’s not what Labor’s saying. Labor is implying that FTTN = ADSL copper, which is most certainly untrue. And it’s not giving a range of prices — it’s ONLY using the $5k figure. There are worse claims out there (such as the even more ridiculous line rental stuff), but it should be pretty clear that these statements alone are just plain misleading.

Is it my job to hold the Coalition to account? Yes. And I do. You’ve all seen that. But it’s ALSO my job to call Labor, which, let us not forget, is actually in power right now, to account. And in my professional opinion, these ads, and these kinds of statements from Conroy and other Labor MPs, are just plain misleading in the best case, and in the worse case, outright lies.

Ok, I disagree that Turnbull has created a comprehensive model. I believe all he’s done is LEARN alot about FTTN. But how to implement it here in Australia? No. That will be NBNCo’s job and he, IMO, is GROSSLY underestimating the time, effort and money required to get what he wants out of it. But that’s not what I was talking about. I meant in THIS example, Turnbull is doing the same thing- he’s pulling BT’s numbers and throwing them BACK at Conroy who had pulled BT’s numbers in the first place. That’s all I meant.

Secondly- where are Labour implying ADSL= FTTN? They said old, slow, unreliable copper network. Sure, ADSL runs on that. So will FTTN. Just less of it. They’ve never mentioned ADSL and FTTN in any ad I’ve seen. Only ” old copper”. That might imply to SOME people who don’t understand that we’re gonna be left with ADSL…..but that’s not the case and that’s not what they’ve said. If they had, I’d completely agree, that would be blatant falsity. Yes, it is twisting words….but that’s par for the course from BOTH parties.

Finally they DIDN’T claim the FOD cost was $5k and that’s it. They said average. Which is still wrong, but much less wrong that what you implied.

Look, I’m happy to admit I’m coloured by my dislike of Turnbull’s weasel words which he’s used for so long. And I KNOW Renai you are fed up with the excuses from NBNCo. personally. I think we’re both looking at this from our own coloured examples and I don’t think we’re gonna agree on it. Suffice it to say, Labor AND LNP are in the wrong here. I just don’t really get this whole debate, as I’ve said before, when we have zero actual evidence (we have examples, but not concrete evidence) of how the network will even be designed en mass in Australia, let alone its’ costs and timeframe. So claiming that Labor saying “$5k average for FOD” is a lie is as bad as claiming it’ll be “much less”. We have no evidence for either scenario, because they both come from the same source.

You cannot claim the only fibre on demand cost is $5k. That’s an inaccurate statement.

If you don’t agree with me on those issues, then I have no further reason to discuss the issue with you, and I won’t be commenting further in relation to your comments. I suggest you take another look at the ad at the top of the page, and another look at Conroy’s comments.

No its not – it depends on your definition of old, slow and copper. You will be on copper – even if there’s a lot more fibre involved than there is today, the copper is the limiting factor, the one that will cause the most problems and be the most prone to failure. So copper is accurate.

The copper is old. You can’t really dispute that. Except where it is new copper, but the vast majority of the country is using decades old copper, so that’s true, too.

Then there’s the question of speed – is VDSL over FTTN slow? Let’s go with your fictional 25mbps ‘guaranteed’ minimum and compare it with the 100mbps available today for anyone on the fibre NBN (not just those with a Node on their doorstep). Is one quarter of the performance ‘slow’? I would say so. What about compared with 1gbps which will be available by the end of the year? Is 1 40th the speed slow?

But that’s not a reasonable comparison.The real comparison is upload speed. Is 1 400th the speed slow? Hell, even on the 100mbps plan you’re getting 40mbps upload, literally infinitely faster than the LNP are prepared to guarantee on FTTN. But even at their best estimate of 6mbps, that’s about 7 times faster. By any definition, that’s still slow.

So based on the facts, the pamphlet is true. Simplistic perhaps? Sure. But you need to simplify these things for most people or they won’t absorb anything. As long as it’s factual I don’t have a hell of a lot of problem with it, and no amount of investigation by the ACCC will change that because it is supported by the facts.

You’re clearly incapable of following the discussion. Sure, VDSL over copper is capable of quite exciting speeds – more than 1gbps has been demonstrated. But that’s irrelevant when those speeds can only be sustained over a distance of 10m or less with no joins in the cable.

Theoretical maximum speeds are irrelevant to evaluation of the performance of the network as a whole. ‘Average’ speeds might be considered useful by some, but I’d argue that those on very low speed connections would be uninterested in an average speed they are technically unable to attain. It is also a useless metric to evaluate when considering the capabilities of the network to support particular services or applications – it is only as usable as it’s slowest connection. Finally, it is impossible to estimate the percentage of the network that will be able to connect at the maximum speed, or indeed any speed, on FTTN. If there is a minimum performance guarantee, however, we can compare the minimum performance capability of both networks.

So I would argue the only useful metric for evaluating the performance of the network and comparing the two alternatives is the minimum speed it is technically capable of for any and all users. There are numerous arguments against FTTN being capable of 25mbps as a minimum across the whole network, but I’m ignoring that for the sake of this comparison – even at 25 or 50Mbps, that is still slow when compared with the technical minimum available on the FTTH NBN.

The FTTN NBN is essentially a pointless upgrade (particularly for north of 90% of the FTTH NBN build cost) if it cannot guarantee minimum speeds that will meet the requirements of Australian users and businesses for the life of the network. FTTH can do so easily.

“It also says “or you’re left on the old, slow copper network”, which, considering half that network is to be chopped up and replaced with fibre (FTTN), is a flat out misrepresentation.”

FTTN still uses old, (IE not new), slow, (it will provide 50Mb/s for 90% of customers in the footprint, some time in the future as against 1Gb/s for anyone who wants it, anywhere in the FTTP footprint by Christmas this year. By any definition of the word, a speed in the future that is 5% of the speed that will be available this year would have to be considered slow) copper. How is this in any way misrepresentation?

It’s quite clear in Turnbull’s policy, unless you reside in an area that fibre already distributed you have to pay an imaginary monetary figure suggested to be $5000 to have Fibre connected.
Nothing dishonest, wrong or unfactual about this it is the Liberal Party’s stated policy!

I truly hope the new team with Albanese at the head can pull this sort of stuff and actually callout the LNP on it’s CONSIDERABLE weaknesses in it’s policy.

In saying that, I think frankly Turnbull is as full of Shit as the Labor MPs here. $5000 is a complete ans utter GUESS. Using BTs cost is pointless. This is Australia. We have different labour costs, different fibre costs, different distances to nodes, different network setup, different legislation surrounding workplace safety and insurance and different regulations. There is zero evidence that it will or won’t cost anything more or less than $5K on average and I don’t understand this debate.

FOD WILL cost the customer. What it will cost is kind of irrelevant because it will cost more than connecting to the same level of service on the current NBN. THAT is the message Labor should be attacking with. And Turnbull needs to realise arguing that connection to an inferior service for free and charging for connection to a equal service, is not a valid selling point…..

I’m sorry, but it is not irrelevant. I own my own business and work from home. If the cost is $10k, I will not be able to pay it. If it is $2k, I will.

“There is zero evidence that it will or won’t cost anything more or less than $5K on average”

Actually there is direct evidence from BT OpenReach’s plans in the UK, and the strong understanding which Turnbull’s office has about the nature of Australia’s copper infrastructure based on extensive discussions with Telstra. You can’t just claim this data doesn’t exist! It does!

The hyperbole around this issue is hilarious. I’m planning to do a longer article on it over the weekend, to be published next week.

1- What it’s costs is irrelevant to the policy. I didn’t explain that well. It costs end users for an equal service to the NBN. THAT is what Labor should be pushing.

2- I find it interesting that you say it’s not irrelevant to you and note $10k is too much, but $2k isn’t. What about the other 12 million Australian households? $2k night be WAY too much for their small business. Are they wrong then? I know you are talking about how you will vote based on what it does for you. But I don’t really think of the NBN like that. I never have. I will get the NBN one day, later than many, before many others, but what I want to see is EVERYONE getting the BEST deal for years to cone. Otherwise the policy and the amount of work that’s gone I into it is pointless. Can’t you see that?

On the costs, I say once again, these costs ARE NOT IN AUSTRALIA. We have one of the most expensive construction industries in the world because of our regulations. You cannot simply take their cost and say ‘see, it’s not gonna cost $5K on average’. It may not. But it may. And I really don’t understand why you are so hung up on it. Sure, fallout Conroy/Labor on presenting it as fact by all means- it isn’t. But it’s not fact either that it won’t.

> 1- What it’s costs is irrelevant to the policy. I didn’t explain that well. It costs end users for an equal service to the NBN. THAT is what Labor should be pushing.

An equal service is not being provided to all. Customers have to pay significantly higher charges to access faster speeds ($150/month for 1Gbps services). Imagine if we priced electricity connections like the NBN? You can have enough power to run one appliance. If you want to run more appliances at the same time then your connection fee increases steeply.

> 2- I find it interesting that you say it’s not irrelevant to you and note $10k is too much, but $2k isn’t. What about the other 12 million Australian households? $2k night be WAY too much for their small business. Are they wrong then? I know you are talking about how you will vote based on what it does for you. But I don’t really think of the NBN like that. I never have. I will get the NBN one day, later than many, before many others, but what I want to see is EVERYONE getting the BEST deal for years to cone. Otherwise the policy and the amount of work that’s gone I into it is pointless. Can’t you see that?

If $2000 is too much for a small business, then it is highly unlikely that they will see value in a fast internet connection. Under Labor’s NBN 1Gbps will cost you $1800/year just in wholesale AVC charges to which you need to add data (CVC) and RSP costs.

Under the Coalition plan people will have a minimum speed of 50Mbps in 2019 and the option of fibre, whereas under the Labor plan 50% on fibre will connect at 12Mbps and less than 5% in 2028 will have 1Gbps.

> On the costs, I say once again, these costs ARE NOT IN AUSTRALIA. We have one of the most expensive construction industries in the world because of our regulations.

If by regulations you mean inefficient work practices, then you have a very good point.

> You cannot simply take their cost and say ‘see, it’s not gonna cost $5K on average’. It may not. But it may. And I really don’t understand why you are so hung up on it. Sure, fallout Conroy/Labor on presenting it as fact by all means- it isn’t. But it’s not fact either that it won’t.

It would be interesting to compare this with NBNCo’s costing model for construction, however we know that NBNCo’s construction costs are under considerable pressure.

An equal service is not being provided to all. Customers have to pay significantly higher charges to access faster speeds ($150/month for 1Gbps services). Imagine if we priced electricity connections like the NBN? You can have enough power to run one appliance. If you want to run more appliances at the same time then your connection fee increases steeply.

As I said to you in another post you ignored: This isn’t like water or electricity where even if we increase the input capacity of your line or pipe, your consumption rate is still limited. If you give someone a 1Gbps connection, they will use as much as they can. There isn’t a limit in the form of a tap or finite energy consumption.

If $2000 is too much for a small business, then it is highly unlikely that they will see value in a fast internet connection. Under Labor’s NBN 1Gbps will cost you $1800/year just in wholesale AVC charges to which you need to add data (CVC) and RSP costs.

And how much will the ongoing cost for access to a 1Gbps plan be?

Where is your estimate for that? Because I’ll tell you, it isn’t zero.

> Where is your estimate for that? Because I’ll tell you, it isn’t zero.

The current cost for copper unbundled local loop (ULL) is set by ACCC at $16. Fibre is cheaper to maintain, so one would expect ongoing costs to be cheaper. Under the Coalition, the customer is paying the cost of installation up front. I would argue that it is therefore not unreasonable to expect the charge to be under $20/month. On top of this RSP costs and data costs (CVC equivalent) would need to be added.

Bandwidth isn’t free. You seriously think, especially considering the plan was for NBNCo to go half half for the FoD installation, and the cost of back haul, that the price difference between a 1Gbps service and a up to 100Mbps one is going to be negligible?

No, it isn’t. You want to know why Google can offer Fibre so cheap? Because they have advantages of economy of scale. You said it yourself, 1Gbps only works if you can put a lot of people on that plan. FoD won’t do this because people first have to outlay a large deposit.

So you’re back to the same very problem you’re unhappy with the current NBN for: expensive and low uptake of highest tier services

> Bandwidth isn’t free. You seriously think, especially considering the plan was for NBNCo to go half half for the FoD installation, and the cost of back haul, that the price difference between a 1Gbps service and a up to 100Mbps one is going to be negligible?

A 1Gbps service is capable of 324TB/month. We have this thing called quotas in Australia which limit usage. Someone with a 100GB quota on a 1Gbps plan uses their connection for less than 30 seconds at full speed per day. If quotas grow significantly then growth in CVC revenue would easily pay for an upgrade to GPON10.

> No, it isn’t. You want to know why Google can offer Fibre so cheap? Because they have advantages of economy of scale. You said it yourself, 1Gbps only works if you can put a lot of people on that plan. FoD won’t do this because people first have to outlay a large deposit.

~$3000 might be expensive for you, but for many it isn’t that much, especially when you consider that it will be claimable as either a business or education expense. It is approaching half a percent of the average house price.

The point you are missing is that it isn’t connection speeds that put stress on the network, but downloading. In fact buffer bloat which is caused by slow network links is actually a serious performance issue on networks.

> So you’re back to the same very problem you’re unhappy with the current NBN for: expensive and low uptake of highest tier services

Wrong. The problem exists because you don’t understand where the network performance issues really are. To paraphrase Simon Hackett, in his March 2011 CommsDay Presentation about NBN Wholesale Pricing Structure Challenges: NBNCo have created through pricing an artificial scarcity in a fibre network where abundance exists.

A 1Gbps service is capable of 324TB/month. We have this thing called quotas in Australia which limit usage. Someone with a 100GB quota on a 1Gbps plan uses their connection for less than 30 seconds at full speed per day. If quotas grow significantly then growth in CVC revenue would easily pay for an upgrade to GPON10.

Not only have I addressed this before in other posts you actually failed to address my question.

~$3000 might be expensive for you, but for many it isn’t that much, especially when you consider that it will be claimable as either a business or education expense. It is approaching half a percent of the average house price.

Me thinks you actually don’t know as much about the socio-economic distribution of Australia as you think you do.

Also, I can afford $3K for a FoD upgrade, and if that was a problem for me, I would get it. But my socio-economic status is not what is at concern here, just because I can afford it doesn’t mean it’s the correct policy. Please don’t make assumptions about my socio-economic status, it’s insulting.

The point you are missing is that it isn’t connection speeds that put stress on the network, but downloading. In fact buffer bloat which is caused by slow network links is actually a serious performance issue on networks.

Wait, so this is about physical capacities now, not cost? Talk about moving the goal posts. 1Gbps to 93% of people in Australia is physically possible, just, as I have been trying to tell you more expensive than you believe it to be.

Well maybe the LNP should release some proper details on what a fibre extension will cost then? It is clear it will cost thousands, thousands more than it will under Labor’s plan, for not much saving in the overall project.

And it is unclear how much FTTN will actually improve things, being that Turnbull’s promises of minimum speeds are spurious at best. He points to other countries as examples, ignoring that those countries don’t have guaranteed minimum speeds.

Maybe you can nitpick details but the basic premise is correct, to get fibre under the LNP plan you will be out of pocket, or you get left on the comparatively slow copper.

Those promises are based, as current ADSL speeds are, on the length of the copper. Turnbull’s team has estimated pretty precisely what that length will need to be to guarantee 25Mbps. They’re not just making shit up here!

“Maybe you can nitpick details but the basic premise is correct, to get fibre under the LNP plan you will be out of pocket, or you get left on the comparatively slow copper.”

Mate, I’m sorry, but FTTN does not equal copper! FTTN is half copper and half fibre! You can’t just say the speeds will be the same, when they’re replacing half the copper cable between the exchange and people’s houses with fibre!

FTTN is a very well accepted rollout paradigm overseas — for God’s sake, it’s being used to service almost the entirety of the UK. You can’t just reject it out of hand because it’s technically inferior to FTTP. Yes, it is technically inferior, but it still offers very real service delivery benefits compared with pure copper ADSL. That’s a technical reality!

My point is that I know if I get a fibre connection, my connection speed is a known quantity. This is not the case with FTTN. I am on particularly bad copper which also suffers from AM radio interference. FTTN will do little or nothing to alleviate these specific issues, despite reducing my cable length. So I don’t know how much FTTN will help my personal situation, least of all because I have no idea how far from the node I will end up being.

Turnbull talks of minimum speeds, and cites the connection speeds of the UK as an example of how he can promise that. But the advertised speeds in the UK are an “up to” figure, like ADSL here. So those guarantees don’t mean a lot to me, unless he also commits to large scale work done to the copper, which he ruled out during the asbestos debarcle.

I have no doubt that FTTN will improve the broadband situation in Australia. But it is still unarguable that

a) if you don’t pay for a fibre connection, somewhere in the range of $2k-$5k most likely, you will be stuck on a copper connection, albeit of shorter length
b) that copper connection will be relatively slower than that fibre connection

So if I was playing the part of Politifact, I’d probably rate the claim as “half true”.

I also wouldn’t agree that FTTN is “half copper, half fibre”. Otherwise you’d have to count ADSL as partly fibre , as your connection is fibre from the exchange onwards. Sure, it reduces your copper cable length, but some form of Cu bottleneck still exists. A network connection is only as fast as it’s slowest segment, which is why the upload issue is so important.

@Renai I’m sorry to say that Turnbull has made the speeds up. To “guarantee” 25 Mbps on a copper network that has been allowed to fall in to disrepair is either deceitful or idiotic.

The greatest issues I have with Turnbull is his refusal to engage people like myself with more than 15 years Networking experience in a sensible debate. He just sticks 2 fingers up at Australia and will do it the way he thinks is best, whilst bullshitting about how he can magically build this sooner, faster, for less and at less cost to the consumer.

Just because Turnbull says he can do something, doesn’t mean he’s going to do it, or that it’s doable at all.

I suspect that the actual cost to build the Turnbull Bullshit Network will be almost the same as the current NBN but with a significant performance reduction and buggered upgrade path.

At that point Turnbull is better off to just go with FTTH and say he’s managing it better or some other Turnbull business bullshit political fluff.

‘I suspect that the actual cost to build the Turnbull Bullshit Network will be almost the same as the current NBN but with a significant performance reduction and buggered upgrade path.’

So with your years of networking experience when you read what Openreach is doing in the UK for example and where they have unequivocally stated:

!. FTTN is faster to rollout than FTTP
2. FTTN is cheaper to rollout than FTTP
3. There is a upgrade path from FTTN to FTTP the product is called is called Fibre on Demand and Openreach markets it at the wholesale level and UK RSP’s are selling it.

Which of course in no way disputes any of the points I made , that’s why you always use that lazy ‘just wack a link in technique’ without any further comment over and over, you don’t even copy out the areas that supposedly disputes what I said – because there isn’t any.

“Those promises are based, as current ADSL speeds are, on the length of the copper. Turnbull’s team has estimated pretty precisely what that length will need to be to guarantee 25Mbps. They’re not just making shit up here!”

If that were the case, then they would also have a pretty good idea of how many nodes they require yet the number seems to change at every pronouncement and now they have had to throw mini-nodes into the mix.

Certainly my own back of the postage stamp figures indicate that they are not allowing for anywhere near enough nodes to cover the major cities let alone the more spread out regional areas.

If we have 1 node each 300m then Pi x R^2 = 282,743 square meters per node.

24,424,000,000/282,743 = 83,382 nodes.

But wait, streets run mostly in a square grid rather than in circles (unless you are in Canberra and it still holds true anyway as circles have gaps between them when they touch).

So we need to add another 20% to allow for the gaps which takes us to well over 100,000 nodes.

22% of connections will be FTTP but this will be mostly new estates, small, localised roll-outs that by and large wont be included in the CURRENT built environment area, NEW estates being the operative word.
Lets be incredibly generous though and allow a full 20% allowance.

Thats still well in excess of 80,000 nodes.

And remember, this is very much a BEST case scenario with no allowance for convoluted cable runs etc.

I don’t post much, and generally I like your journalism Renai (even this article), but I can’t agree with you saying FTTN doesn’t leave you on old copper because its half fibre. With that logic I could say my current adsl is 1% copper 99% fibre as it turns into fibre once it hits the exchange.

FTTN is reducing the amount of old copper you have to run over, but running over old copper you still are. That is a fact, you can spin it if you want, but its spin, just like my above ADSL example.

Almost every discussion of the NBN in technical circles in Australia at the moment rapidly descends into an extremely detailed nitpick of the Coalition’s policy, leading to the conclusion that it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on and should be flatly rejected as a viable option for Australia’s telecommunications future.

It’s what I have started to call the “FTTP or nothing” premise. The fundamental point being pushed here is that not only is the Coalition’s policy inferior to Labor’s NBN, but that it’s so bad that it’s not worth proceeding with. Only Labor’s NBN vision, according to many commentators, will be able to deliver Australia any benefit, when it comes to the upgrade of Australia’s national broadband infrastructure, and only Labor’s vision will be able to provide for Australia’s digital future.

Renai the turn cloak they call him! :)
Nice article once again, would never find this stuff out on other news web sites being either one way (for or against no middle ground) well most of them anyways.
Cheers.

Hey Renai it’s all very well to attack those who are in favor of the proper NBN and use silly words in headlines to describe them. Clearly you have a point to make URL style. However you should understand the idiocy over the last three years from the coalition has not helped. They made the environment. They made the rules, yet we should placate them because they get all pissy when others apply that same standard to them and win?

What a crock.

Nitpicking is acceptable. The NBN has been nitpicked relentlessly from day one. Should the coalition win the election the same amount of nitpicking needs to be applied to their ‘plan’. More so because it’ll be disregarding 1. a perfectly good plan already in motion and one that has a much longer lifespan. 2. years of hard work to get to this point 3. (most of all) what the majority of PEOPLE want.

Clearly that nitpicking is not going to happen in the mainstream media, it hasn’t happened so far. Will that change? Probably not. Regardless those in favor of the NBN are ready, willing and able to do it. Your criticism of them invalid and irrelevant.

We have seen the NBN attacked to the nth degree (actually beyond, to ridiculously childish/nit picky lengths), Quigley accused of being nothing but a crook, people who think FttP is best for Australia accused of being selfish, porn addicts/pirates and all of the evidence relating to the NBN’s cost/funding ignored, with anything from $50B to $200B of our income taxes quoted… which is unfounded BS, nothing else.

But now it’s apparently politically incorrect (and we are fanbois) to even suggest (without any FUD whatsoever) that simply, in one’s opinion based upon all of the evidence, the Coalition’s plan is (in comparison to the NBN) a poor alternative?

And just to clarify, I have been having a number of debates over at ZDNet (which has been overrun by the extreme right and really not even worth worrying about anymore, IMO)…

Those there who are so against the NBN (like a few here) that have contradicted themselves, made quotes and denied making them (even when the quotes are linked to) and they will never admit anything NBN is good ever, due to their admitted political subserviency and/or one can only assume otherwise, their own financial greed …

Just as those of us in the centre can see the benefits of the NBN to everyone, they obviously see it as the biggest threat ever to their politics and wallets…

> But now it’s apparently politically incorrect (and we are fanbois) to even suggest (without any FUD whatsoever) that simply, in one’s opinion based upon all of the evidence, the Coalition’s plan is (in comparison to the NBN) a poor alternative?

What evidence are you basing it on?
– Labor’s plan is for 50% of fibre connections to be 12Mbps. The Coalition plan is for a minimum speed of 50Mbps in 2019.
– Labor’s plan is for less than 5% of fibre connections to be 1Gbps in 2028.
– The Coalition plan to target areas of greatest need first, whereas Labor are overbuilding the HFC network first to reduce competition.
– The Labor plan is to use fibre exclusively, whereas the Coalition plan uses the appropriate technology.
– The Coalition plan will almost certainly be cheaper due to lower costs

Thank you Mathew for for being my star witness and demonstrating my point perfectly…right on cue.

You have been quoting the old 50% – 12mbps figures from the corporate plan, almost daily and in fact, sometimes many times in one day at multiple forums, since the corporate plan was released… You do so even now, after having been supplied with actuals on many occasions, clearly demonstrating that “in reality”, these numbers have been and are “actually surpassing” NBNCo’s projections. Yet you bluntly refuse to accept “reality” and rely upon superseded projections to argue your point.

Why would anyone ignore reality and continue to focus upon and quote projections which have been and are being surpassed?

Conversely, you “readily accept” that NBNCo are behind their planned projections in other areas, because it’s reality and “you completely ignore all corporate plan projections, in these other areas”, to argue your point.

Why would anyone who focusses daily on projections in one area contained within the NBN corporate plan, quoting such projections as being the be all and end all, ignore the very same projections elsewhere in the very same doc?

You apply two entirely opposing rules to the NBN but lo and behold guess what? Both of these roads lead to NBN derision :/

> You have been quoting the old 50% – 12mbps figures from the corporate plan, almost daily and in fact, sometimes many times in one day at multiple forums, since the corporate plan was released… You do so even now, after having been supplied with actuals on many occasions, clearly demonstrating that “in reality”, these numbers have been and are “actually surpassing” NBNCo’s projections. Yet you bluntly refuse to accept “reality” and rely upon superseded projections to argue your point.

The rebuttal to this is really simple and has been made before. Compare the percentage on 12Mbps in the 2011-2914 and 2012-2015 plans. What you find is that it hasn’t changed significantly. The percentage of customers on 100Mbps has increased. From this the obvious conclusion is that NBNCo expect few people on the middle speed tiers and most people to be either on the slowest plan or faster plans. This reinforces my point that speed tiers unfairly disadvantage the socio-economically disadvantaged.

> Why would anyone ignore reality and continue to focus upon and quote projections which have been and are being surpassed?

What we have are “early adopter” numbers which you would expect to see biased towards the faster plans. What NBNCo are expecting is that the last group of people to sign up when the copper is disconnected will choose the 12Mbps.

> Conversely, you “readily accept” that NBNCo are behind their planned projections in other areas, because it’s reality and “you completely ignore all corporate plan projections, in these other areas”, to argue your point.

Can you provide some evidence of where I’ve stated that NBNCo are behind without providing evidence? It is accepted by almost everyone that the only reason NBNCo made their numbers in June 2013 is because they revised them down significantly in March 2013.

Yes ok vague enough, but which particular 12Mbps NBN plan available today is $20 cheaper than a Coalition FTTN plan?

Just to clarify you need to quote the actual monthly NBN plan in dollars and data allowance and the actual monthly FTTN Coalition plan in dollars and the same data allowance then subtract the Coalition FTTN plan from the NBN 12Mbps plan so you end up with $20 in favor of the NBN plan.

“This reinforces my point that speed tiers unfairly disadvantage the socio-economically disadvantaged.”
<< Many labor voters come from wealthy backgrounds- the simple reason being that most money is inherited!

– There will speed tiers on the Coalition plan too
– Buying a FoD connection will not subsidise 1Gbps access much, and will still likely be almost as expensive.
– The only way to economically provide 1Gbps connections for all would not allow for product differences between RSPs.
– Australia does not have enough bandwidth to offer 1Gbps to everyone without considerable investment in overseas cables.
-The overbuild and priorities of building is often something agreed upon but I personally consider it a minor issue when compared to the issues the Coalition policy presents.
– By appropriate you mean cheaper, right?

– Buying a FoD connection will not subsidise 1Gbps access much, and will still likely be almost as expensive.

Doubtful. The reason for the cost of 1Gbps charges under Labor’s NBN is to subsidise the slower speeds. This subsidy isn’t required under the Coalition plan.

> – The only way to economically provide 1Gbps connections for all would not allow for product differences between RSPs.

Can you elaborate on this? I would argue that 1Gbps connections actually allow greater room for product variability, because you don’t have the artificial constraints imposed by speed tiers. An historical reference for this is Internode’s flat rate plans.

> – Australia does not have enough bandwidth to offer 1Gbps to everyone without considerable investment in overseas cables.

The first false assumption you’ve made here is that everyone will have unlimited (324TB) quotas.
The second false assumption you’ve made is that everyone will be accessign overseas sites
The third point you’ve ignored is that many of the most popular sites have caching services in Australia, so international bandwidth is not as relevant. In fact, 1Gbps should see increased investment from conttent providers in Australia.
Finally, do you consider that Australia has enough bandwidth to support 100Mbps connections?

> -The overbuild and priorities of building is often something agreed upon but I personally consider it a minor issue when compared to the issues the Coalition policy presents.

I beg to differ. The overbuild and priorities of building is a prime example of where NBNCo is focusing on a political objective rather than the best solution.

> – By appropriate you mean cheaper, right?

Not necessarily. The glaring example of Labor’s political rather than engineering choices is to use wireless in rural towns of less than 1000 premises. These towns have copper networks and many have ADSL. Upgrading the DSLAMs to VDSL would deliver significantly faster speeds for most (all?) residents, at significantly cheaper costs than FTTP. Remember that the copper will still be maintained for phone lines.

Are you kidding me, Michael? Did you REALLY just try to make an argument for FTTN in a rural area? Wow.

Yes, they have copper. Yes, some of them may even have ADSL. But do you have any concept of the relationship between performance and length of the copper cable? At anything greater than about 450m ADSL is superior to VDSL2. Now, how close do you think most people in rural areas live to each other? Oh sure, there are plenty of people who live in towns where their houses are arranged right next to each other like a suburban area. But where such towns can be justifiably reached by fibre they already are. To suggest that the LNP FTTN NBN is going to suddenly run extra fibre and FTTN to those areas when the FTTH NBN is not is to either misunderstand or misrepresent the facts – just because they have copper doesn’t mean FTTN will suddenly just work for them at the flick of a switch;fibre will need to a be run throughout their area to connect the nodes. Given the FTTN NBN is drafted to include the same wireless/satellite footprint that the FTTH NBN is provisioned for suggests that even the LNP recognise this isn’t an issue they can compete on – the cost of getting fibre out to these areas is prohibitively high, so it’s not currently happening under either policy.

The great thing about the FTTH NBN, though, is due to its likely profitability, it will generate a significant enough return to the government that they can use revenue from it to pay for future upgrades to the network, such as running more fibre to rural and regional premises that won’t receive it as part of the original build. These people will also receive full speed access to the NBN (and thus Internet and all services and applications delivered therein) no matter how far they are from each other, unlike FTTN which will only ever be able to serve those people living close enough together to make node deployment realistically feasible.

> Are you kidding me, Michael? Did you REALLY just try to make an argument for FTTN in a rural area?

Plenty of rural towns are under 1000 premises. One example for you is Gladstone, SA where ADSL2+ is currently available, but under Labor’s NBN it will be wireless only.

> Oh sure, there are plenty of people who live in towns where their houses are arranged right next to each other like a suburban area. But where such towns can be justifiably reached by fibre they already are.

You are right about the towns having houses are close to each other. Towns like Gladstone are tiny (often less than 1km wide, and these towns already have fibre running to the local exchange. There are many small towns in South Australia that currently have ADSL2+, but to whom Labor are only offering wireless services. These towns aren’t that small when you consider that many have schools and health services.

> The cost of getting fibre out to these areas is prohibitively high, so it’s not currently happening under either policy.

Fibre already runs to these communities and many will have NBN fibre running through the town. It is the cost of installing fibre over the last mile that is the issue. Labor’s policy means that ADSL2+ services will be disconnected in these towns and residents will be forced onto wireless.

> These people will also receive full speed access to the NBN (and thus Internet and all services and applications delivered therein) no matter how far they are from each other, unlike FTTN which will only ever be able to serve those people living close enough together to make node deployment realistically feasible.

Except that these towns are already marked as wireless only, while for many the surrounding towns are receiving FTTP. How does the Gladstone “compete” with Jamestown for residents when one high school has fibre and the other 12Mbps wireless? Which community will a business establish in or consolidate to? Where will the government services be?

FTTN puts each town on an equal footing and fibre on demand means that a business, school or other organisation can establish itself.

I suggest jumping the car and going for a drive to some of these communities so that you can appreciate what I’m talking about. I recommend choosing the steak in the pub.

And under the Coalition policy their appears to be no change in the cut of points for wireless/sat. Which I have said before, and you ignored.

In fact, if you’re recall, the Labor plan (and presumably the Coaliton one too, though they haven’t given any specific details) is leaving the CAN under the control of Telstra for these areas for a decade, so maybe, the communities can campaign, if it’s that important to them, to have their infrastructure upgraded and brought out from Telstra so they can keep it running post Telstra CAN.

It’s not up the government to solve everyone’s problems. Something I find interesting you don’t grasp considering you seem to think everyone who isn’t happy with FTTN will be able to get FoD.

Finally, believe it or not, with the low population densities and the recent advances and future potential of wireless for rural communities wireless isn’t actually that bad. Have you read this paper? Maybe you’ll find the conclusions and data it produces interesting, for example it concluded:

The fixed wireless network model was used to show the average download speed a single user could expect to receive, depending on their location, in an ideal circumstance where they are the only person accessing cell resources. While in reality, more users will use the base station resources so speeds will be slower, the results demonstrated that fixed wireless networks are a good substitute for fixed cabled network in rural areas. Users can access a wide range of services and download large amounts of data without overloading the network, while experiencing a good level of performance.

Mathew, remember, just because someone isn’t getting a fixed line connection, especially your ideal fixed line connection of 1Gbps does not mean they are not benefiting from the technology being offered to them.

Doubtful. The reason for the cost of 1Gbps charges under Labor’s NBN is to subsidise the slower speeds. This subsidy isn’t required under the Coalition plan.

Wrong. That is not the only reason. As has been discussed countless times before.

Can you elaborate on this? I would argue that 1Gbps connections actually allow greater room for product variability, because you don’t have the artificial constraints imposed by speed tiers. An historical reference for this is Internode’s flat rate plans.

Then maybe you need to educate yourself on what product differentials providers can engage in, because under ADSL2+ the only difference providers can realistically offer, apart from value add services, is quota, and in order to remain competitive, they card very similar amounts, except in cases where they have a significant advantage (Telstra exploiting there monoploy, TPG exploiting pipe, or bargain DSLAMs buy bulk ordering).

With so much of the network now being moved under NBNCo’s control and enforced uniform pricing, all of these subtle advantages disappear. TPG doesn’t pay less to get bandwidth from the PoI to OLTs, Telstra can’t exploit their monopoly to provide between (temporary) value proposition to encourage custom migration, large providers can’t order more OLT equipment from NBNCo and be offered a bulk discount.

Every customer, once you reach the “threshold of delivery” you have so often talked about, will cost the same to deliver the same quota to by every RSP. They may experiment with different charging options, different cross-subsidisation as they do under ADSL2+, but ultimately, prices would be so similar that you’ve just added another layer of complexity and consumers would have been much better of if NBNCo had just offered, as Google did, services direct to consumers.

The first false assumption you’ve made here is that everyone will have unlimited (324TB) quotas.

I have not made that assumption. Stated that I have doesn’t make it true.

The second false assumption you’ve made is that everyone will be accessign overseas sites

Again, I have not made this assumption either.

The third point you’ve ignored is that many of the most popular sites have caching services in Australia, so international bandwidth is not as relevant. In fact, 1Gbps should see increased investment from conttent providers in Australia.

But not before the sudden and dramatic market unsuitability because peak bandwidth requirements end up being more significant in cost analysis than average usage, as I explained, and you have ignored, in another post. Those content providers also have a capacity, which they would have to upgrade, not because there will be more requests, but those requests will need to be serviced FASTER (meaning more expensive servers to sit them on) further adding to the problem.

Finally, do you consider that Australia has enough bandwidth to support 100Mbps connections?

To everyone? Maybe. The problem isn’t as extreme as with 1Gbps. To the demand we’re currently seeing on the NBN? Most definitely.

I beg to differ. The overbuild and priorities of building is a prime example of where NBNCo is focusing on a political objective rather than the best solution.

And the fact the Coalition have moved from their “minimal investment” policy they brought to the next election to the policy they now is a prime example of where the Coalition are focusing on a political objective rather than the best solution. If there was a Bipartisan solution here that was apolitical as possible, we would have implemented it. If nothing else, I have faith in the Federal Government for that.

Not necessarily. The glaring example of Labor’s political rather than engineering choices is to use wireless in rural towns of less than 1000 premises. These towns have copper networks and many have ADSL. Upgrading the DSLAMs to VDSL would deliver significantly faster speeds for most (all?) residents, at significantly cheaper costs than FTTP. Remember that the copper will still be maintained for phone lines.

1) Those on Wireless STAY on Wireless under the Coalition Plan.
2) FTTN gets more expensive comparatively to FTTP the lower your population density. Which is why FTTN is only really slated for high population density areas by overseas Telecoms deploying it. Upgrading those DSLAMs will do jack shit.

>> Doubtful. The reason for the cost of 1Gbps charges under Labor’s NBN is to subsidise the slower speeds. This subsidy isn’t required under the Coalition plan.
> Wrong. That is not the only reason. As has been discussed countless times before.

Really? It is explicitly clear in the Corporate Plan that the higher speed tiers subsidise the lower speed tiers. What other reason is there?

>> Can you elaborate on this? I would argue that 1Gbps connections actually allow greater room for product variability, because you don’t have the artificial constraints imposed by speed tiers. An historical reference for this is Internode’s flat rate plans.

> Then maybe you need to educate yourself on what product differentials providers can engage in, because under ADSL2+ the only difference providers can realistically offer, apart from value add services, is quota, and in order to remain competitive, they card very similar amounts, except in cases where they have a significant advantage (Telstra exploiting there monoploy, TPG exploiting pipe, or bargain DSLAMs buy bulk ordering).

Congratulations on ignoring the example of flatrate.

Currently the NBN plans are priced as speed tier plus quota. Some providers even go as far as making it select your speed and select your quota. I’d hardly say that is innovative.

You should go back what it was like when everybody resold Telstra ADSL services – the difference between plans was negligible. The only innovations in plans have been unlimited which results in network congestion and flatrate by Internode which failed because they couldn’t attract sufficient low quota users. Both of these occurred in the ADSL2+ network where speed tiers didn’t apply.

> With so much of the network now being moved under NBNCo’s control and enforced uniform pricing, all of these subtle advantages disappear. TPG doesn’t pay less to get bandwidth from the PoI to OLTs, Telstra can’t exploit their monopoly to provide between (temporary) value proposition to encourage custom migration, large providers can’t order more OLT equipment from NBNCo and be offered a bulk discount.

TPG still own PIPE which means they will still be able to take advantage of all the PIPE fibre. Telstra still own all their fibre to every exchange in Australia lowering their cost base and larger providers will be able to take advantage of a larger customer base to smooth out network peaks (e.g. less CVC per customer) and extract bigger discounts from hardware providers. I guess you meant other differentiators apart from the examples you provided.

> Every customer, once you reach the “threshold of delivery” you have so often talked about, will cost the same to deliver the same quota to by every RSP.

Actually the cost of extra customers once you reach a certain threshold is based entirely on their quota, which means small customers are close to free in backhaul requirements.

> They may experiment with different charging options, different cross-subsidisation as they do under ADSL2+, but ultimately, prices would be so similar that you’ve just added another layer of complexity and consumers would have been much better of if NBNCo had just offered, as Google did, services direct to consumers.

This directly contradicts what we saw when ADSL2+ was introduced to the market place. I think you will find that RSPs offer very little cross-subsidisation between plans, because it distorts their client base towards the subsidised plans resulting in less customers on the over-priced plans. The market is reasonably transparent and the cost to change provider is very low.

>> The third point you’ve ignored is that many of the most popular sites have caching services in Australia, so international bandwidth is not as relevant. In fact, 1Gbps should see increased investment from content providers in Australia.
> But not before the sudden and dramatic market unsuitability because peak bandwidth requirements end up being more significant in cost analysis than average usage, as I explained, and you have ignored, in another post. Those content providers also have a capacity, which they would have to upgrade, not because there will be more requests, but those requests will need to be serviced FASTER (meaning more expensive servers to sit them on) further adding to the problem.

Serious content delivery network providers are connected directly into the backbone (often co-located at RSPs). The servers can be designed with multiple 10GbE network ports and are easily capable of pushing raw bits down them. Servicing the requests faster means that they have less open connections to maintain and there is less impact from buffer bloat occurring. The only way you put more load on these servers is if you increase the amount of data being downloaded, but you have stated that you are not assuming this.

Let me re-express this for you. A content (file) server is designed to meet a certain throughput under the assumption that it is continually serving multiple clients. If we assume that those clients requests are reasonably equally distributed (which is not unreasonable when you are talking about companies like Akamai) then faster connections mean that the data can be sent and the connection resources freed more quickly.

Think of it a bit like a freeway. If an accident occurs or road works aren’t cleared early enough then the congestion starts early. and lasts for longer. If the cars in the period before peak hour are able to travel faster then the congestion is delayed and finishes earlier.

>> Finally, do you consider that Australia has enough bandwidth to support 100Mbps connections?
> To everyone? Maybe. The problem isn’t as extreme as with 1Gbps. To the demand we’re currently seeing on the NBN? Most definitely.

I think you are over estimating the impact of 1Gbps. First you have to have servers capable of delivering interactive content at that speed, then you need to have services which demand that throughput over a long period and finally huge quotas. I’d suggest that it will take time for those three factors to occur. Virtual presence applications are a possible example and for these there is real benefit in 1Gbps.

>> Not necessarily. The glaring example of Labor’s political rather than engineering choices is to use wireless in rural towns of less than 1000 premises. These towns have copper networks and many have ADSL. Upgrading the DSLAMs to VDSL would deliver significantly faster speeds for most (all?) residents, at significantly cheaper costs than FTTP. Remember that the copper will still be maintained for phone lines.

> 1) Those on Wireless STAY on Wireless under the Coalition Plan.
> 2) FTTN gets more expensive comparatively to FTTP the lower your population density. Which is why FTTN is only really slated for high population density areas by overseas Telecoms deploying it. Upgrading those DSLAMs will do jack shit.

WRONG. Those communities won’t have their ADSL DLSAMs ripped out by the Coalition plan and be forced onto wireless. The communities I’ve described like Gladstone are as dense as many older suburban areas with traditional blocks. Labor have to rip out the ADSL DSLAMs because they undermine their position that FTTN is not viable and instead install wireless which costs more and for many in these townships will have worse performance.

Really? It is explicitly clear in the Corporate Plan that the higher speed tiers subsidise the lower speed tiers. What other reason is there?

So you think in backhaul costs and equipment costs there is absolute no difference in cost for offering a 1Gbps plan to consumers and a 1Mbps plan? At all? The fact is, while lower speed tiers exist, which they will, it will cost more to deliver 1Gbps plans because you require more backhaul, unless you happen to have a huge customer base at the affected location, tens of thousands of customers. On average, there is going to be, assuming the 70% figure in the corperate plan 57 thousand customers for
PoI.

That, for those of you capable of maths is about 11.4 GB per user, per month assuming you have every single customer on said PoI and you don’t have any addication bandwidth to deal with peak loading. In all your calculations did you try and work out that? The current average is around 24GB/month. It doesn’t take a genus to work out that getting 2Gbps backhaul each means we’ll be allocating more back-haul than we need to considering that, even accounting for people who decide to pool their bandwidth, there are at least 4 different providers.

Congratulations on ignoring the example of flatrate.

I didn’t ignore it, it will encounter the same problem for anyone who offers it, average cost per GB will be relatively the same.

Currently the NBN plans are priced as speed tier plus quota. Some providers even go as far as making it select your speed and select your quota. I’d hardly say that is innovative.

So because providers have gone for the path of least resistance, sticking to what they know, the increased options in wholesale pricing that providers have to them has no bearing whatsoever?

There are two ways to allow people to innovate: you either remove as many barriers as you can from them, (e.g. ULL), or you create enough options for them that they can innovate on top of your platform, however restrictive (e.g. AppStore).

What you don’t do is limit their options and impose decisions on them, like forcing them to provide a certain speed tier while creating other restrictions like inability to impact the network performance they have (e.g. removing CVC).

NBNCo can’t give everyone a dumb fibre pipe to their customers, like in ULL, they have to provide intermediary technology between the PoI and NTU. Unfortunately, with fibre networks, this is the way it has to be. The only way to overcome this problem and provide truely innovative products is to vertically intergrate the entire process. Now I can’t imagine anyone would be happy with NBNCo being that kind of monoploy, that’s what you crucify Telstra for doing.

You should go back what it was like when everybody resold Telstra ADSL services – the difference between plans was negligible.

No it won’t, because NBNCo are not a vertically integrated monopoly. With NBNCo you aren’t selling rebraned, or less effective, depending on who you ask, Telstra products, you’re selling your own products that you have set your own constraints in. The AVC/CVC framework allows for this.

The only reason it is relatively expensive is because the network is expensive. Rebalancing it as option, as I have pointed out numerous times, that will be explored if NBNCo’s assumptions are proved false.

The only innovations in plans have been unlimited which results in network congestion

You haven’t used TPG recently have you? Unlimited doesn’t result in network congestion, unlimited where you don’t predict usage patterns properly is what causes congestion.

and flatrate by Internode which failed because they couldn’t attract sufficient low quota users. Both of these occurred in the ADSL2+ network where speed tiers didn’t apply.

Yes, but under ADSL2+ they had no barriers to innovation. As I explained before, that is one proven way to allow for innovation, a flexible platform is another.

PG still own PIPE which means they will still be able to take advantage of all the PIPE fibre. Telstra still own all their fibre to every exchange in Australia lowering their cost base and larger providers will be able to take advantage of a larger customer base to smooth out network peaks (e.g. less CVC per customer) and extract bigger discounts from hardware providers. I guess you meant other differentiators apart from the examples you provided.

Unfortunately, as you well know, compared to the cost of NBNCo access, these advantages provide quite a negligible impact to overall networks. Since they NBNCo, nhy, need to extract such a high ARPU, limiting the options for RSPs to do that, as you suggest, within NBNCo means that prices will remain fairly uniform.

If you can save 20c on per unit to sell pineapples fuel compared to your competitor, but it costs you both $10 per pineapple, that 20c difference will mean that the price differences between your products isn’t that significant any-more, and all your competitor has to do is something, like spend 5c/unit for better labelling that, in the eyes of consumer, makes it appear to be a superior product, despite no difference at all between them.

A $10 no frills pineapple vs a fancy brand $10.25 pineapple when the pineapples are exactly the same? Unfortunately yes, Mathew, consumers are that stupid.

This directly contradicts what we saw when ADSL2+ was introduced to the market place. I think you will find that RSPs offer very little cross-subsidisation between plans, because it distorts their client base towards the subsidised plans resulting in less customers on the over-priced plans. The market is reasonably transparent and the cost to change provider is very low.

This is true of quotas, not of speed tiers. Why? Because speed tiers provide a tangible, if insignificant to most consumers, improvement. It is literally takes 1/8th the time to download a song on iTunes on a 100Mbps plans. They can see this, this is valuable to them. It doesn’t matter that they can’t download anymore songs than they would of 12Mbps because they didn’t upgrade their quota as well, it doesn’t matter that they don’t listen to all that much music anyway.

Compared to what, an extra 50GB of quota? What does that even mean? While the fact that, in reality, there is little to no difference between providing a 12Mbps plan and a 100Mbps plan to consumers technologically speaking on the NBN, there is perceived value in the higher plans. Why do people play more for a Volkswagon when a Sokoda is practically identical?

Serious content delivery network providers are connected directly into the backbone (often co-located at RSPs). The servers can be designed with multiple 10GbE network ports and are easily capable of pushing raw bits down them. Servicing the requests faster means that they have less open connections to maintain and there is less impact from buffer bloat occurring. The only way you put more load on these servers is if you increase the amount of data being downloaded, but you have stated that you are not assuming this

The key words there is can be designed with. Can doesn’t mean are.

I expected if you turned on 1Gbps upgrading some of the older stock from 1GbE to 10GbE that they haven’t bothered updating because Australia doesn’t justify that kind of investment will suddenly become priority 1 for lot of the content providers. I think you forget just how small we are in global internet terms.

I think you are over estimating the impact of 1Gbps. First you have to have servers capable of delivering interactive content at that speed, then you need to have services which demand that throughput over a long period and finally huge quotas. I’d suggest that it will take time for those three factors to occur. Virtual presence applications are a possible example and for these there is real benefit in 1Gbps.

And I think you are under estimating the impact of 1Gbps. You will create more demand for backhaul, you will put pressure on content providers install upgrades, even if those upgrades aren’t sticky necessary, just in case there is a sudden an unexpected peak.

In reality, I am painting a bleaker picture than the reality. Why? To contrast you optimism. Because, boy, your view of network world is overly simplistic. You seem to forget convenient facts, like Google Fibre are only going where demand is indicated, and think we can paint Australia with a magical 1Gbps brush and everyone will live happily ever after.

Why do I do this? Because ultimately, and this is the kicker: you’re taking the chicken way out of this problem. You’re complaining that the NBN is doing a piss poor job of fixing this problem, and it can be done better, and instead of suggesting a better course of action, you’re just like “Well stuff it, why bother, let’s go with the other guy here” and trying to retroactively justify that decision.

You ignore things like the fact speed tiers will still exist under the Coalition Plan. The fact that the last 7% plan remains unchanged. The fact that, unfortunately, there isn’t actually enough demand to justify 1Gbps for everyone.

Instead of saying, “what if we upped the minimum from 12Mbps?” you’re taking a vague an unfounded understanding of the Coalition policy, that (see page 15) doesn’t actually reconcile with the policy as written and advertised and trying to paint it as better. And yes, if everyone could easily afford FoD who needed it, if people on FTTN were offered their maximum line speed with no speed tiers, then the Coalition plan would be better than what is offered by NBNCo. But that isn’t the reality, just like…

WRONG. Those communities won’t have their ADSL DLSAMs ripped out by the Coalition plan and be forced onto wireless. The communities I’ve described like Gladstone are as dense as many older suburban areas with traditional blocks. Labor have to rip out the ADSL DSLAMs because they undermine their position that FTTN is not viable and instead install wireless which costs more and for many in these townships will have worse performance.

This isn’t the reality either. Remember, the CAN network isn’t been shut down straight away under the Labor plan. They have no plans to “rip out” the copper either. What they do have plans to do is legislate that Telstra must maintain it for at least 10 years. NBNCo are just as much “ripping out” the copper for these communities as the Coalition are “ripping out the fibre.”

– Labor’s plan is for 50% of fibre connections to be 12Mbps. The Coalition plan is for a minimum speed of 50Mbps in 2019.
– Labor’s plan is for less than 5% of fibre connections to be 1Gbps in 2028.

Mathew, wake up. The figures you quote are FORECASTS, not a plan, and they are, in fact wrong anyway, as the take up of faster plans has been much higher than the NBN forecast.

The NBN is building a network where people can choose what speed they want, all the way up up to 1 Gbps. Under the bulk of the FTTN LBN, people will only be able to choose much, much slower plans (indeed the maximum speed…50Gbps…available on it is a speed I’ve already had for while now).

You have been shown to be wrong about these points several times, and yet you continue to persist with your (wrong) assertions. I can only conclude you are knowingly lying about it or don’t believe that they are only a forecast and are actually a secret agenda or something…

> Mathew, wake up. The figures you quote are FORECASTS, not a plan, and they are, in fact wrong anyway, as the take up of faster plans has been much higher than the NBN forecast.

But you would also be aware that there is little difference in the percentage of customers on 12Mbps fibre connections between the 2011-2014 and 2012-2015 plans.

> The NBN is building a network where people can choose what speed they want, all the way up up to 1 Gbps. Under the bulk of the FTTN LBN, people will only be able to choose much, much slower plans (indeed the maximum speed…50Gbps…available on it is a speed I’ve already had for while now).

The Coalition plan has a minimum speed of 50Mbps by 2019. The fact that it is a minimum speed has been pointed out before, therefore a reasonable person can only conclude based on the evidence that you are deliberately and knowingly lying.

Both plans have FTTP. The Coalition plan is simply for the fibre to be installed on demand. The reality is that very few people will be able to afford 1Gbps plans under Labor’s NBN (less than 5% in 2028). Considering that 1Gbps AVC wholesale charges are $150/month ($1800/year), the majority of people (and likely many more) would be able to afford the ~$3000 fibre installation charge.

> You have been shown to be wrong about these points several times, and yet you continue to persist with your (wrong) assertions. I can only conclude you are knowingly lying about it or don’t believe that they are only a forecast and are actually a secret agenda or something…

WRONG. You’ve just ignored the previously pointed out fact that NBNCo didn’t revise the percentage on 12Mbps fibre connections between the 2011-2014 and 2012-2015 plans, while they did increase the percentage on 100Mbps plans. This indicates that Labor’s NBN will increase the divide between rich and poor i this country. If NBNCo had dramatically revised down (e.g. below 20%) the percentage connecting on fibre at 12Mbps, then I would concede the issue of a digital divide is not that significant.

the majority of people (and likely many more) would be able to afford the ~$3000 fibre installation charge.

Sorry, can you just say that again so I can have another laugh? 1- this is TOTAL conjecture (especially seeing as some 15% of Australia is below the poverty line and another 3p0% last on 35-40k a year), 2- even if they DID they does not mean they SHOULD.

> Sorry, can you just say that again so I can have another laugh? 1- this is TOTAL conjecture (especially seeing as some 15% of Australia is below the poverty line and another 3p0% last on 35-40k a year), 2- even if they DID they does not mean they SHOULD.

Way to go in taking a point out of context. I was referring to that segment of the community (less than 5% in 2028 according to Labor) who can afford 1Gbps plan ($1800/year just in wholesale AVC) should be able to come up with the finances for a ~$3000 installation fee.

As for the people who are socio-economically disadvantaged the Coalition plan will see them with with 50Mbps (versus Labor’s 12Mbps) at a cheaper price.

>As for the people who are socio-economically disadvantaged the Coalition plan will see them with with 50Mbps (versus Labor’s 12Mbps) at a cheaper price.

No they won’t. They will be on a plan. The same 12Mbps plan that they would be on in a Labor NBN.

The difference is that under the Coalition plan, they will choose a 12Mbps plan from a possible guaranteed(in theory) 50mbps option.
Whereas on the Labor plan they will be getting a 12Mbps plan from a possible guaranteed 1Gbps option.

Mathew why do you persist in conflating these 2 elements. I have seen this across many threads now. Do you honestly not understand? One is in reference to the actual “guaranteed” available download rate, the other is a reference to plans offered for sale to the customers.

I think what pisses him off are “blind faith” arguments, especially if it’s obvious the persons clutching at straws. I see a few posts from a lot of people (on both sides) where I think they would have been better off just not posting, or going away and thinking about it a bit more, and then coming back with something worthwhile to say.

It’s fine to have an opinion, but people should back it up with more than assertions (it is an evidence based site after all) and try not to be a rules lawyer about it (not specifically referring to you here, but were all guilty on occasion).

Personally, I see flaws in both plans, but I see more flaws in the LBN. Alternatively, they both also have good points (I believe MDU’s under the NBN should use FTTB like Malcolm wants to use for the LBN for example). It’s not religion, it’s a plan, folks need to realise there can always be something that can be tweaked in any human endeavour…

Which is made worse by pig headed individuals such as yourself who have NFI what they’re talking on and keep reporting the same points without stopping to consider the great implications and ignoring any counter points that undermine their point of view.

How many times have we had the 12Mbps debate only to have you disappear half way through when I post something that (apparently) you have no counter to only to come back a week later and start it all over again?

Oh but you’re happy to nitpick my posts after all, even when that doesn’t actually address my counters. I think you have a serious case of reality dysfunction here.

The vast majority of NBN supporters know and have acknowledged that the NBN roll out is behind schedule… which part of this do you not understand?

The vast majority of NBN supporters know and have acknowledged that the Coalition’s broadband plans have incrementally improved over time… which part of this do you not understand?

The vast majority of NBN supporters know and have acknowledged that FttN would have been a fantastic option 5-10 years ago or if FttP was not already being rolled out… which part of this do you not understand?

Conversely, we have never heard one positive word about the NBN from the vast majority of NBN detractors… in fact some will even stoop so low as to keep quoting superseded NBNCo projections which have been surpassed to disgracefully try to keep disparaging the NBN.

Many people have. Not everyone is tarred with your brush of inflexible thinking.

The NBN is behind, I wish they would get their act together.
Being behind doesn’t make FTTN a cost effective long term solution. So any way of speeding up the current rollout would be great. If that’s have the Libs do it, fine. You’re like Abbott complaining about Gillard “playing the sex card” when she finally has enough of Abbott’s sexist comments and gives him a ear full. Projecting your inflexible mindset on others.

“The vast majority of NBN supporters know and have acknowledged that the Coalition’s broadband plans have incrementally improved over time…”

Alex I actually predicted this long ago. I said something like “The coalition clowns will have to be constantly modifying their plan until they figure out FttP is the right way to go”. Think I said it here or on Zdnet… someone replied with something like “no they wont” but I cant remember who that was…

“The vast majority of NBN supporters know and have acknowledged that FttN would have been a fantastic option 5-10 years ago or if FttP was not already being rolled out”

“There is no doubt that such a network is a stop gap solution, hypothetically if we rolled this out in say 2001 (when it would have been cutting edge) for todays needs it would have made sense but I imagine the same arguments against the NBN today would have been made against a FttN network back then too.”

Some things are ‘all or nothing’ propositions, though. I want to breathe, and I want to be able to do so with both lungs. I don’t want a more expensive half a lung interim solution for a decade at a higher monthly cost when I’ve already been promised both lungs within the same time frame.

You keep saying ‘play the ball, not the man’, but what is descending into attacking the reasoned arguments of others as ‘nitpicking’? You’re applying an offensive label to whole arguments and dismissing them wholesale instead of discussing the points raised in a rational, reasonable manner.

Hell, it could be said your attacks against the ALP for their ‘propaganda’ fliers is ‘nitpicking’, because you’re trying to find technical reasons to invalidate their claims. But that’s not nitpicking, that’s discussing the details of the issue. As are the responses from others when they question some of the points you have made on their technical merits.

Oh wait – is it a ‘detailed analysis’ if it’s done by a journalist, but ‘nitpicking’ if it’s a comment made by a member of the public?

Exactly: the brain drain will continue as Murdochs globalists have planned! WE ARE THE WORLDS QUARRY AND NOTHING ELSE!! WE HAVE THE BEST GRADE COAL AND THE EASIEST ACCESS TO OTHER MINERALS – BUILD SOME RAIL LINES AND BOBS YOUR BESTEST BUDDY!!

Coalition are the ones who say “if you want fibre you should pay for it” so really if anyone is making up numbers it should be of little consequence to them. Really they should embrace the big numbers even triple it and say FoD will cost 15k to make their obsolete FttN plan look better.

Yep the Labor mob are putting porkies in their electoral advertising material. I can’t say I am surprised but I will forgive them for the moment because it is easy to spot and………

I got electioneering material from the Liberal aspirant in Robertson today. I think that they were trying to target seniors. Guess what was missing from all their stuff? The NBN. Not a picture, not a line of print, not even one word.

Not only am I pissed off that the Liberals seem to think that they should target seniors differently I am bloody angry that they either are totally ignoring the NBN or believe it is not something seniors would be interested in.

What was the mistake they made last time according to their own report?

The Openreach pricing doesn’t cap out at $5k, they have several other bands above Band G (the $5k one). The bands above that are Bands H (2000-2999m) though K and are all listed as “Terms on Application”.

Band K is 8000m and above, and considering fibre can run up to 32Km….I’d shudder to think what that one would set you back, you’d have to be Clive Palmer to afford it…

The only thing actually misleading about that flyer is it should actually say ““If you want fibre, you pay up to $5,000 or more, or you’re left on the old, slow copper network.”. It’s just as damning, but a whole lot more accurate.

What does peak average speed mean? Elsewhere in the article it talks about the average speed being 4Mbps. 4Mbps seems slow when you consider the average ADSL2+ speed is 10Mbps, especially when you consider HFC connections at 100Mbps.

> I think a case could be made for the “or you’re left on the old, slow copper network” portion of the statement as well, especially if Malcolm is looking at 800m, and not closer, nodes.

Funny I think of Labor’s network being slow, considering they are predicting that 50% will connect at 12Mbps, whereas the Coalition plan is for a minimum speed of 50Mbps in 2019.

> A spend of $30 billion for a 1.6Mbps speed boost, when you can spend just a bit more and get everyone to 100Mbps, kind of makes me angry for some odd reason…

But everyone isn’t going to 100Mbps. Labor’s Corporate Plan predicts 50% at 12Mbps and less than 5% (in 2028) at 1Gbps. It makes me angry that for no good reason that the potential under Labor was for half of Australia to be slower than HFC, FTTN and 4G. They might be slightly better off than an average ADSL2+ connection.

What makes me angrier still is that people who consider themselves informed don’t even understand what they are supporting.

Are you really that f#&@ing stupid, Michael? Or you simply don’t care how moronic you appear as long as you can continue your trolling campaign?

The FTTH NBN allows flexibility for customers to choose the speed grade at which they connect. This is no different to ADSL plans whereby customers could choose to connect at 256k, 512k, 1mbps or 1.5mbps. It is an established form of product diversification. It is not a technical limitation of the infrastructure resulting in a hard ceiling limiting the maximum speed customers can connect at – anyone who chooses the 12mbps plan does so due to their own personal financial constraints because they will save money opting for a cheaper monthly plan that gives them slower (though for their usage, adequate) Internet connection performance.

And then, of course, there’s the NBN Co projections. Do you understand why companies make projections? For the purposes of planning and budget allocation? NBN Co estimated that around half of retail connections would be at the lowest (12mbps) tier. That also happens to be the least profitable product. They made that estimate and used it as a fundamental assumption upon which to calculate ROI on the project given relatively well understood cost projections. It turns out that real world uptake suggests that this figure was far too conservative – only a fraction of end users are actually opting for this lowest tier product as they connect to the NBN. That means the NBN is more profitable than NBN Co estimated. That means ROI targets are more likely to be met, and sooner.

That does not mean customers are limited to a slower performing network with a ‘minimum connection speed’ of 12mbps. The minimum connection speed is the slowest speed able to be sustained by the network for a particular customer. Today that is 400mbps,and by the end of the year that will be 1gbps. The speed at which a customer chooses to connect to the network given their choice of plan is immaterial to the minimum performance if the network.

Frankly, I consider your constant trolling with this and other repetitive regurgitation of baseless, inaccurate and extensively corrected misinformation to be directly in breach of the standards Renai sets for comments on his blog, and I can only wonder at his reasons for not banning you indefinitely and deleting everything you post. I’m more than sick of it, though, and it is starting to taint my view of the blog generally – Renai’s guidelines have traditionally kept the discussion on this site a step above the frustrating, pointless idiocy found on the kinds of unmoderated sites morons like you like to frequent, but failing to uphold those standards in your case undermines the point of even having them in the first place. So, you know, well done for being a trolling prick and poisoning the world with your toxic stupidity.

That means the NBN is more profitable than NBN Co estimated. That means ROI targets are more likely to be met, and sooner.

Let’s keep things simple and civil.

If the vast majority of subscribers are connecting to a 100Mbit connection as opposed to the baseline scenario of 12Mbit in the Corporate Plan, this means that RSPs will have to provision more CVC than normally required under the baseline scenario. This should translate into higher ARPU for NBNco vis-a-vis the baseline forecast in the Corporate Plan.

Please supply evidence that ARPU for connected premises is tracking higher than forecast to support your claim that “NBN is more profitable than NBN Co estimate”.

> Please supply evidence that ARPU for connected premises is tracking higher than forecast to support your claim that “NBN is more profitable than NBN Co estimate”.

The NBNCo Corporate Plan states that ARPU is ~$20 versus the forecast ~$32 and attempts to justify this by stating that it is caused by the 150Mbps of free CVC provided during the start-up phase. I’m a little curious as to how ARPU can be less than the cheapest AVC plan ($24).

“That means the NBN is more profitable than NBN Co estimated. That means ROI targets are more likely to be met, and sooner.”

Nailed it.

From Senate Estimates 24th May 2012:

Senator LUDLAM: Let us just stick to that for the moment. So there is a 38 to 50 per cent uptake on the fastest tier and that is completely at odds with what you were estimating in the business plan, from memory.

Mr Quigley : We did not have such a high ratio. But you also need to take into account that we have early adopters on this. Perhaps Mr Hassel would like to add something to this. It is his area and he has looked at this in some detail.

Mr Hassel : We have been very greatly encouraged by the take-up at the high end of the speeds—

Senator LUDLAM: I would imagine so.

Mr Hassel : and also greatly encouraged that that has continued as well. It was the case very early on and we thought that that would be very much around early adopters but it has continued over the months, as I think Mr Quigley went through in his explanation.

Senator LUDLAM: How far at odds are those early numbers from a very small sample with the projections that you put your business plan for once the network is fully built up?

Mr Hassel : In the 2010 corporate plan our assumptions were that the 12:1 service would be something like about 53 or 54 per cent.

Senator LUDLAM: And that ended up being 18 per cent?

Mr Hassel : Yes. And our assumption was that the 100:40—the top one—would be about 8 per cent.

Senator LUDLAM: And that ended up being about 34 or 35 per cent?

Mr Hassel : About 38 per cent.

Senator LUDLAM: So it is upside down?

Mr Hassel : Yes.

Senator LUDLAM: What you think is going to happen to those numbers over time? As I said, the whole premise of the business is based on the fact that nothing like those numbers of people will end up taking up your fastest package. If they do you are running a much more lucrative business than the minister was hoping you would.

Mr Quigley : Because we have a fixed return, we lower prices faster.

Senator LUDLAM: You lower prices, or you hand money back to the government, or that just pushes your wholesale price down?

Mr Quigley : It is the subject of ACCC discussion—this is the SAU. If the SAU is accepted, we can only earn 350 basis points above the long-term running average government bond rate. Once we get above that we will just decrease prices. But I also should say, just to put a word of caution in here, when we get into the main migration of the copper onto the fibre network we expected that ratio to start shifting around a bit. What I think it would be fair to say is that we are very comfortable with the assumptions we made in our corporate plan. In other words this data is de-risking the corporate plan.

Senator LUDLAM: It is de-risking it in that you pitched a worst-case scenario that people would mostly use the slower service?

Mr Quigley : As in all corporate plans of this sort—I have never done one quite this big—I try to make sure that the company is conservative. But time will tell. We simply do not know yet.

Senator LUDLAM: I hope you are given the opportunity to find out. I really do.

So, despite all the leading questions loaded with presumptions that Senator Ludlam put before the NBNco executives, this is the best judgment offered up by the trench diggers:

Mr Quigley : But time will tell. We simply do not know yet.

Nowhere in the testimony does Mr Quigley suggest that NBNco is currently tracking more profitable than originally forecast in the Corporate Plan. Your Honour, the Defence for FTTP is confusing the wild speculation of Senator Ludlam for the testimony of NBNco executives themselves. The Prosecution rests its case and moves for summary judgment!

“Wow”, huh? Incredible how a close reading of primary sources can throw a light on the distorting spin that NBN boosters have put on that particular Senate Estimates hearing. Look at the number of times NBNco executives attempted to counter Senator Ludlam’s aggressive and optimistic extrapolations:

But you also need to take into account that we have early adopters on this.

But I also should say, just to put a word of caution in here, when we get into the main migration of the copper onto the fibre network we expect that ratio to start shifting around a bit.

But time will tell. We simply do not know yet.

We. simply. do. not. know. yet.

Over-enthusiastic, hyperventilating Senator: “So, is it not the case that if we hypothetically locate 10 trillion barrels of light sweet crude 1 kilometre from Bondi Beach at an easily accessible depth of 500m, we will become the largest and lowest cost producer and exporter of crude oil in the world,….. our Treasury will be flush with hundreds of billions of dollars of annual income from the oil fields,… Australians won’t ever have to pay taxes again for centuries,… we will have free universal healthcare, education and housing for every Australian….”

You asked for evidence that it is tracking higher than forecast. They gave it to you. Now your claim is in future it may not track higher than forecast. It may not, but now it is. Didn’t like the reply so you shifted the goal posts?

Indeed, there are many hypotheticals in this, much like the Liberals “Faster, cheaper and more affordable” claims about the LBN…it may be, but the “cheaper and more affordable” part already has wobbly wheels…

Labor is pushing fibre to everyone’s doorstep regardless of whether they need it or not. As a result, the embedded capital cost of Labor’s NBN is the highest or maximum. There is naturally a lot of embedded waste because many many premises will get fibre even though they don’t need it.

Coalition NBN gives each premise the opportunity to choose for themselves whether they need fibre or not. Under such a scheme where the cost of ordering fibre is correlated to distance from the node, the premises most likely to order a fibre connection will be those closest to a node; and they will bear the cost themselves. As a result, the embedded capital cost of Coalition’s NBN is much much lower… and also, on the whole, capital is more productively deployed because you only do a fibre hook-up where it makes economic sense to do so.

You can’t do it can you? You can’t admit the LNP plan might not be the best because it is too short sighted to take into account the growth of usage beyond what they think. To the forecasts EVERY company has been giving.

Indeed. It appears Deep Thinker is assuming those closest to the node will be the most likely because it is cheaper and therefore more viable for them. What he doesn’t appear to realise is that in fact they MAY be the LEAST likely as they have the best speeds under FTTN for free. Those further from the nodes are limited because of their distance, but conversely it is also the most expensive for them making it unviable sometimes.

I dont really understand why he believes it will be simple no matter what the situation. There are many now using fibre under the NBN who DON’T need it, but WANT it. Where do they sit in that scenario? Fact is FoD is inefficient. Not because it isn’t possible- it most certainly is. But because mobilisation costs. Each time a person orders it, they must mobilise to do so. That may add anywhere from a few % to up to twice the cost, depending on the requirements.

Argue all you like that you’re giving people a choice with FTTN but the fact of the matter is, by giving them that ‘choice’ you are actually making the rollout AS A WHOLE, cost more and take longer. The argument is then, is the added cost to individuals and it’s toll on the economy worse than the added cost to do it all upfront to gain efficiency and time?

That is not specifically answerable, contrary to what the LNP believe. Connectivity is too ingrained in our society to accurately measure its’ efficiency either way. You can estimate, but there will always be an element of guesswork. I don’t have a problem with taking the small risk that it is more efficient to do it upfront even though it almost certainly is going to take longer than thought. And I’m a conservative. So what does that say about the LNP?….

Just hypothetically, if you expect that under a FTTN/FoD regime, 80% (say) of premises will end up ordering FoD, of course it makes sense to rollout FTTP instead. No brainer.

Anyone pushing the FTTN/FoD, be it a telco or a political party, does so because they believe there is no generalised demand for FTTP connections at a price that will allow the network builder to recoup the capital costs. It only makes sense to implement FTTN/FoD if you believe only a small minority of premises will pay for fibre.

So, you are fully entitled to believe that there is universal demand for FTTP and that revenues will pay off all the building costs, in which case support for Labor NBN is rational….. but all the posts in this thread arguing that FTTN/FoD is an expensive way to rollout FTTP to everyone is a completely spurious point because FTTN/FoD is not designed with universal FTTP delivery as an underlying objective.

And there is where you just can’t see the futility of this whole argument can you? You are of the utter belief that the majority of people, even in 10 years, will NOT need or want FTTP. That is what the LNP believes as well. ALL evidence and anecdotal reports is that before FTTN was even COMPLETE, the speeds would be under giant pressure.

You are looking at this as if FTTP is optional even in 10 years. If you truly believe that then there is absolutely nothing else I have left to say to you. And please don’t give me the Shit about ‘but the capital for FTTN can be recouped before then’. FTTN will take MINIMUM 6 years, more like 8. MAXIMUM 5 years after that demand will be well beyond that which FTTN can handle in the majority of cases, not just some ‘photography studios’. You REALLY think they can repay $29.5 billion in 5 years with LESS revenue than the NBN???

Yes, if there is a general need for FTTH in say the next 10 years FTTH makes more sense.
How do you address the predictions of the major networking companies that predict that speeds of 100Mb will be the norm by 2017 and 1Gb speeds will become necessary in the early 2020s? Are they all wrong and Malcolm Turnbull and Abbott correct that 25Mb is more than enough for the majority?

But everyone isn’t going to 100Mbps. Labor’s Corporate Plan predicts 50% at 12Mbps and less than 5% (in 2028) at 1Gbps. It makes me angry that for no good reason that the potential under Labor was for half of Australia to be slower than HFC, FTTN and 4G. They might be slightly better off than an average ADSL2+ connection.

Under the NBN, people can choose whatever speed they like and/or can afford. If people get slowwer than HFC, FTTN and 4G, it’ll be because thats their choice.

Under the LBN, there is no such choice, and in fact, only 90% of the people on the 71% FTTN LBN will get the full 25 (and later 50Mbps) speed (as per the coalition policy document).

What makes me angrier still is that people who consider themselves informed don’t even understand what they are supporting.

You get angry that people have a choice? Is it a law somewhere that people have to get the minimum speed?

If you want 25Mbps, then there are 8 plans on the NBN cheaper than the price the Liberals have quoted, and a further 6 at the same price (heck, SkyMesh and Activ8me offer 50Mbps plans that are cheaper).

For people that only want a plain old connection to the internet, and don’t care if it’s slow (for whatever reason), they can get a $30 12Mbps plan and save themselves $20 a month compared to the LBN (no such choice with the LBN, if they can’t afford $52 odd a month, then they wont have any internet)…

> Under the NBN, people can choose whatever speed they like and/or can afford. If people get slowwer than HFC, FTTN and 4G, it’ll be because thats their choice.

Umm… That would be the 93% on fibre under Labor’s NBN?

> Under the LBN, there is no such choice, and in fact, only 90% of the people on the 71% FTTN LBN will get the full 25 (and later 50Mbps) speed (as per the coalition policy document).

Exactly the same choice exists under the Coalition NBN plan – fibre is available on demand.
23% under the Coalition will get FTTP (predominately greenfields).
The other 67% in FTTN regions will have the option of fibre if they can afford it, otherwise they can look forward to a *minimum* speed of 50Mbps (more than quadruple the Labor minimum speed).

Renai, have you ever butted heads with your landlord to have a significant change made to the property, even if it’s supposed to be at your own expensive. I will grant, some landlords will be cooperative, yes, but most won’t. It’s their property after-all.

Further, why would you invest up to $3000 into a property you have absolutely no assurances you can stay in?

I could have been more elaborate in explaining what I meant: but renters getting FoD? Not going to happen.

“Um … what? Evidence, please? Surely all it would take is a request to your landlord for their approval, if you’re paying the costs?”

There is nothing stopping them in the LBN policy (as long as someone pays), it’s true, but just look at the wireless towers and body corporate issues with the current NBN and you’ll realise there are an awful lot of unreasonable folks/bodies around.

Not a specific issue with the LBN, per se, but both the LBN and NBN could have some tweaks in this regard.

> For people that only want a plain old connection to the internet, and don’t care if it’s slow (for whatever reason), they can get a $30 12Mbps plan and save themselves $20 a month compared to the LBN (no such choice with the LBN, if they can’t afford $52 odd a month, then they wont have any internet)…

For people in this situation they would find a 3G or 4G plan cheaper, especially if was included as part of their mobile phone contract.

We can make a guess on costs, based on existing greenfields deployments.

Apart from the fact that that is based on economies of scale across multiple dwellings — the same cannot be said for ad-hoc fibre deployments.

We also can’t really take a UK cost base and apply 1:1 here. There are a number of variables that are very different. And that will change the numbers.

Renai, you may want to label people for supposedly not listening and being all blind to anything but the NBN, but the reality is, there will be a cost to deploy FttH under Turnbull’s policy.

It will vary from location to location, unless it’s defined as a set maximum cost. Just like speeds will be measured in “up to”, unless the network is built with very short copper runs.

You say it’s very relevant as to what the costs is, and then complain when people don’t agree with you, or – shock – don’t take what politicians are saying at face value.

Here’s the thing. There are a bunch of things that are yet to be determined. Cost of deploying fibre to premises is one. Cost to gain the copper is the next.

Is saying it will be $5k on average “patently a lie” then? No. It’s probably high. But since The Honourable Member for Wentworth hasn’t bothered to define the borders for these sorts of costs, then it’s entirely open to interpretation.

The “cost” to connect is a thorn in Turnbull’s side, because they’ve made a choice to pass that on to the customer, up front. Whether it’s $2k-5k, or $10k, doesn’t change that simple fact. That’s going to be a sticking point. It’s going to create an even greater divide than we have now. None of that is unimportant.

For some, the cost will be acceptable, just as you have fairly noted. For others, it will be far more than possible.

I agree that there’s been a lot of bull shit from both sides, to score points. But that doesn’t discount concerns. Both from how the NBNco is tracking, as well as how Turnbull is going to fill in the blanks.

Fibre is waterproof, copper isn’t. That fact alone should render the entire debate futile. The broader long term cost benefits of fibre for a project of this scale have been published adnauseum. What is questionable are the motives behind any ‘independent’ publisher promoting semantic argument on pricing vernacular around a fickle electorate. The government received a mandate in 07 to provide a fibre NBN, however Australia is now on the brink of being condemned to a project that Cisco openly warns will be overwhelmed before it is even completed. ‘Independent’ enterprises with the capacity to influence such an outcome should be very clear in their minds about the repercussions this would pose to the majority of broadband users.

Yep,thanks to Telstra, Rudd revised & upgraded the project to FTTP, so what ? & as for your burst of expenditure dysentery;
“Coalition CAPEX is 20.4b Labor is $37.4b, Required funding Coalition 29.5b Labor 44.1b.”
Your coalition masters announced they would commence a commercial review that will have 60 days to work out how quickly their FFTN plan can be rolled out.Turnbull has conceded they have no idea about the state of the network, so any cost or time frame estimates he peddles are baseless.
If i ever need a laxative Fibroid, I’ll be sure to re read your transparent coalition propaganda.

Yes got the diversion into political name calling, which in no way detracts from what you said, that Labor received a political mandate for a fibre NBN in the 2007 election, which was in fact Fibre to the Node.

Your inability to dispute the fact that the coalition is pushing an inferior product,susceptible to water ingress for which they are unable to provide credible estimates for cost or time of completion highlights that you are simply trolling.

Actually Politifacts said it was mostly false on the basis that it would not cost EXACTLY $5000, Politifacts actually conceded that it could cost considerably MORE than $5000.

In fact they said:
“The costs would be widely variable”
” Our ruling

Gillard said the Coalition’s broadband plan will “cost households $5000 to get connected”.

That is just not accurate. While others in Government qualified the statement by saying the price might be “up to $5000″, Gillard left out the qualifier, making it sound like every family in Australia would have to pay that much. ”

“On ABC Radio National on April 8, Turnbull acknowledged that if Australians lived a kilometre away from a node, it could cost them “several thousand dollars” to pull fibre to their home.”

“Dr Mark Gregory, an electrical and computer engineering expert at RMIT, told us that under the Coalition’s plan, the cost of fibre for some users could tally up to tens of thousands of dollars or more. That’s because distance from the node is only one variable. There’s also the terrain. Cliff-dwellers and island residents, for example, would likely pay far more under the Coalition plan. ”

But, because the cost to each and every Australian will not be EXACTLY $5,000.00 Politifacts rated it mostly false.

It seems politifacts uses a different yardstick for “truth” depending on political party if you take a look at the leeway they give Abbott in comparison

But, back to the point, this article would be rated TOTALLY FALSE based on the same yardstick.
They are in fact mostly ok with “up to $5,000″.

In their own words:
” Gillard said the Coalition’s broadband plan will “cost households $5000 to get connected”.

That is just not accurate. While others in Government qualified the statement by saying the price might be “up to $5000”, Gillard left out the qualifier, making it sound like every family in Australia would have to pay that much. “

Hey Goresh, you truncated your copy before this bit from the Politifact rulling on Gillard.

“And saying the cost to “get connected” was $5000 could imply that those who did not pay would be left unconnected. Under the Coalition plan, most households would be connected by the existing copper system.”

So I’d just like to say right here and now- Will you admit you were wrong if the “review” comes back and says the copper is too degraded in too many places to make FTTN viable as a large scale solution over FTTH? Oh and don’t expect it to take 60 days. Telstra records have been wrong in some areas for decades.

Alex it’s not fair comparing them with people who suffer from a stammer. I’ve known a few people with stammers and they’ve all been really nice. Stammering /stuttering doesn’t mean you have an unsupportable baseless or at best flimsy argument – that fact is rather self evident from the argument as presented ;-)

Perhaps instead of the hypothetical stammer a TA-esque silence and uncontrollable head wobble may have been more apt ;)

Unfortunately however, having corresponded many times previously with our deviously Coalition obsequious friend here, the fact that everyone else finds it evident and factual would be of no consequence to him, if in opposition to his cause :(

““And saying the cost to “get connected” was $5000 could imply that those who did not pay would be left unconnected. Under the Coalition plan, most households would be connected by the existing copper system.””

This is drawing an even longer bow. In normal speech, we leave out the bits that we assume people understand, such as the topic of conversation, in this case FTTP since she is comparing to Labor’s plan and under Labor’s plan FTTP is the only fixed wire technology.
If you want FTTP under the coalition plan you “could” be paying $5000 for it and according to Politifacts OWN expert opinion, you COULD be paying $10000 or more for it.

But because it won’t be exactly $5000.00 it is judged mostly incorrect, which I think even in this artificially restricted scenario is wrong.
The fact is that if you happen to live next to a node, you would be unlikely to order an FTTP extention, over very short lengths FTTN can deliver reasonable speeds. The people looking for FTTP extentions will be those further away and given that Politifacts OWN advice is that costs could significantly exceed $10000, it does not seem unreasonable that the longer runs, the people most likely wanting FTTP, would average around $5000. It is the figure I came up with when I multiplied the BT cost per meter of FTTP extention plus fixed FTTP connection to the average line lengths quoted by Turnbull.

Up to $5000 is assuming I can even get body corporate approval for installation in my rental apartment, probably doesn’t include any cabling work inside the building which would be at my own additional cost and once done the landlord has increased property value and would no doubt put the rent up knowing I won’t leave.

In older buildings the LBN would probably have an advantage in that it would be less disruptive (unless the wiring actually needs replacing). More modern building should have appropriate access already designed in (conduits, access points, etc).

There is some hope that physical access should be a lot easier for either plan in the future though, thanks to Pipe Networks:

NBN fibre has 23.5% of premises passed unable to connect. Over a decade on, Optus HFC still has 36.4% of premises passed unable to connect and remember, under coalition policy, NONE of those will get access to FTTN either, until the end of the roll-out (dependent upon negotiations even then) because they are in an area serviced by HFC.

First of all, is FoD even in the coalition policy, or is it just an option that MAY be tagged on?.

If it is part of the policy, why haven’t they costed it themselves? it seems pretty simple… you provide a service as part of your policy, you should at least have an estimate of how much said service is likely to cost….

Leading back to what seven_tech was saying, its astounding this article is even nitpicking the $5000 claim in the first place, when there is really nothing disproving the claim. It is a conceivable figure for FOD in Australia, (ignoring where the original number came from) that it could well cost on average $5000 we just dont have that information and It seems like a pretty big detail to leave out of a in depth policy. This is probably the question that should have been asked in the article, but the whole point of the article seemed to be that politicians exaggerate the biggest number they can find ( Conroy $5000 / Turnbull $90 billion)

On another note, looking at the BT example in the UK, ( i just took 2 seconds to google it) They dont even guarantee a FoD connection will be made, if its too hard to connect , you receive a rejection letter and simply don’t get it. Food for thought

It is the intent of their policy, the policy also states it is dependent of the review that will take place post a Coalition win, but all of that won’t stop Labor making it up for them in a desperate scare mongering campaign to get votes for Labor.

So Paul is right then? There is nothing written to say FoD will definitely be made available to everyone who receives FttN (BTW I am asking, not telling – hence the question marks)?

That’s a no, err maybe, umm after a review and then when someone points out it’s not guaranteed and you agree (it’s simply intent) they are scare mongering… oh FFS please…

What a classic… coming from someone who will twist and turn every word within the NBN corporate plan to suggest the complete opposite of all clear intent and will in fact argue against the bleedin’ obvious, is now, without any contestation whatsoever… willing to accept any and everything the Coalition says and even better, make claims that this or that will occur (to make FttN sound great) when even the Coalition haven’t guaranteed these things…

It will be available “if feasible”, read into that what you will but would include I expect things like, if the equipment chosen by NBNco is capable of it (you might be connected to a mini-node and who knows what it can do), if there is sufficient capacity on the node back-haul to allow it, if there isn’t 2km of solid granite between you and the node etc etc etc.

The mantra used by Conroy that a FTTP connection “will” cost $5000 has been labled as “mostly false, this is true, but Labor has changed it’s mantra using the qualifier “UP TO”. This makes it perfectly fine. We don’t hear journalists tearing apart other government advertising that states that penalties for certain offences carry a maximum monetary cost and jail time, even though the average is a small fine and community service.

If Turnbull wants to hold the UK up as a shining example of how FTTN works wonderfully, then it’s perfectly acceptable for everyone else to use negatives from the same example to show just how bad it can be.

Why do people say Labors NBN connection is not free, when really it is?
Lets be honest here – NBNCo will connect you to fibre – and it will cost you nothing because they are paying for it. If you want Internet Service – then you pay. THAT is what you are paying for.

To put it simply, under Labors NBN – you pay nothing for the speed boost.

Under Coalitions NBN – to get a boost in speed, you either PAY for a VDSL modem, or you PAY to extend fibre to your home (plus an annual fee??). And so far we haven’t factored in ISP fees – and we’ve already paid.

We are not talking about the Internet Service, we are talking about the transport mechanism of proposed internet service.

Everybody with a brain cell knows if you want a single KB of data THAT is still going to cost. That’s going to be the same on both sides of the coin, so really – in discussing the differences, ISP costs cancel each other out…. so that leaves us with – Labor=FREE, Coalition=$$$$

‘To put it simply, under Labors NBN – you pay nothing for the speed boost.’

You really need to update yourself with the comparative costs of the two rollouts, I will do it for you, Coalition CAPEX is 20.4b Labor is $37.4b, Required funding Coalition 29.5b Labor 44.1b.

If you conclude the speed boost is ‘you pay nothing’ you are living in Fantasy Land.

The other point is the majority of residences will be happy with FTTN speeds and have no intention of speed boosting anyway, and will wait until a RSP decides to ‘speed boost’ their area for them.

The majority of residences will just be happy to get off ADSL sooner with the faster rollout of FTTN instead of waiting- waiting- waiting for the Labor FTTP multi billion dollar extravaganza to pass their door.

Just to clarify, I mean pass their door and they are able to CONNECT TO IT!, not the statistics fudge the NBN Co used to desperately get their twice revised downward premises passed figures to scrape into the June target.

“The other point is the majority of residences will be happy with FTTN speeds and have no intention of speed boosting anyway, and will wait until a RSP decides to ‘speed boost’ their area for them.
The majority of residences will just be happy to get off ADSL sooner with the faster rollout of FTTN instead of waiting- waiting- waiting for the Labor FTTP multi billion dollar extravaganza to pass their door.”

Pure unfounded speculation… without evidence. Do you have any evidence? If so, let’s see it.

Oh, I see, this is just your typical feel good, all is rosy FttN is perfect and NBN/FttP is “bad”?

BTW how much is it going to cost the consumer to have the actual physical fibre itself (not including the service) connected to their home, via the current NBN?

And how much is it going to cost for the same scenario via the Coalition’s FoD?

Seems under the circumstances all the talk about “up to costs” in relation to FoD are moot points.

If as you suggest and even Fibroid (one of the Coalition’s and therefore FttN’s biggest fans) agreed… that the Coalition haven’t actually guaranteed FoD within their policy :/

I suppose it could be argued that they have indicated FoD will be available, but again (if as you and Fibroid say) it’s not guaranteed within their policy… it seems like a strange if not intentional exclusion… considering their policy was only released a few months back.

Yes that’s a link to my post linking to the Politifact ruling, I have no idea what your point is other than than you need to respond for no other reason than you cannot let one of my comments go without responding, and anything will do it seems.

From the link: Gillard said the Coalition’s broadband plan will cost households $5000 to get connected.

“That is just not accurate. While others in Government qualified the statement by saying the price might be “up to $5000″, Gillard left out the qualifier, making it sound like every family in Australia would have to pay that much.”

“You really need to update yourself with the comparative costs of the two rollouts, I will do it for you, Coalition CAPEX is 20.4b Labor is $37.4b, Required funding Coalition 29.5b Labor 44.1b.”

Sure – no real argument there. But what do you think will be the difference in the value of the network when it’s complete? Which one will have the much higher sale value, and which one will have the lower opex (ftth in both cases)

In any case, I’m talking about money directly out of our pocket.
Everybody is paying something indirectly through taxes – both sides have the expense that tax payers are going to cover. Do you really think that the coalitions plans (being cheaper) will lower the amount of tax we pay…They won’t lower tax because their expenditure is less.

So – to reiterate.
When you cancel out similar costs on both sides of the argument… you have your differences.

Actually there is. The coalition costing is ONLY for FTTN whilst the Labor costing is for the whole NBN including the satellite and wireless components which the coalition will still build (hopefully).

Clearly you haven’t been paying attention. Labor’s NBNCo Corporate Plan predicts that 50% on fibre will connect at 12Mbps, so both sides of politics are not in dispute that this speed is adequate for the majority. In fact the Coalition have set a minimum of 50Mbps by 2019.

The Coalition, instead, have suggested that a “minimum expected highest speed tier” of 50Mbps can be expected by 2019 under their policy, because in 2021 they expect the majority of people, like in Labor’s plan, will still be on 12Mbps. As it says planly, on Page 15.

This implies that there must be speed tiers.

50Mbps being the mimimum and no speed tiers are two assertions that Mathew (and sometimes yourself) continually make, in reality, this is not what policy says.

So what’s curious, Fibroid, is that you have not read the Coalition Policy document in full enough to grasp this. And neither has Mathew, which is expecially curious considering how often he refers to the Corperate Plan to attempt to justify his point of view.

Fibroid, please, if you’re going to argue stupid points like this one, get the frak back under your bridge.

NBNCo wont be offering retail services (in fact they are expressly forbidden to do so). Malcolm is referring to the 25 Mbps minimum wholesale service, they still think the most common retail plan will be 12 Mbps…

Then the wording of the policy document on pages 8, 15 and 16 needs some revision or clarification, because on Page 15 it says that the majority of people will be on 12Mbps, and on page 16 it further says:

In 2021, when Labor’s NBN will supposed be completed, the broband plans chosen by the largest group of users (according to NBNCo’s modelling) will offer download data rates of 12Mbps, well within the capacity of both networks.

This sentence doesn’t say “lower than what the Coalition Plan will be offering at the same period”, it says “we can do this too”, implying that speed tiers will exist on the Coalition NBN as well.

The sentence you refer to on page 8 could refer only to the technical capacity of the network, which is how I interupted it upon my first read, not the retail plans offered from said network.

I can now understand how you and Mathew think page 8 “cancels out” page 15 and 16, however, the fact that this contridiction exists in the first place is a problem in of itself.

…50Mbps being the mimimum and no speed tiers are two assertions that Mathew (and sometimes yourself) continually make…

No need, I am pissed at Fibroid for jumping on this post, but as you can see from this quote, I readily admit that Fibroid has not make this assertion nearly as often as Mathew has. With Fibroid we rarely talk about speed tiers at all.

If the coalition claim it will cost 90 billion to build a fiber NBN, with ~15 million conections, that is $6000 a connection.

Why can they claim $6,000 as part of a national rollout, where every home is connected in an area, yet say that $5,000 is to much to run a single line, without the economies of scale that a National rollout enables?

Totally rediculous to expect it to be cheaper to build fiber one house at a time.

IMHO it is incorrect to suggest that the coaliton policy is more then a wish list. Certainly I would not describe it as well researched, merely using analogous situations elsewhere to suggest a similar possibility locally, and only where such examples support the wishlist.

‘it is incorrect to suggest that the coaliton policy is more then a wish list.’

Indeed just like the last two Business plans from the NBN Co, first one was in 2010, revised premises passed and active connections targets downward in Business plan 2012-2015, targets in Business plan 2012-2015 amended in April 2013 down again 35%-44%.

To meet June deadline of revised targets downward from April amendment goal posts had to be moved to redefine premises passed.

Indeed Paul. If you’re undertaking a ‘research project’ at Masters level and you define the scope as “researching previous published papers, anecdotal testimony and case studies of various existing scenarios approximately similar to our local conditions” your project supervisor would tell you to go back and add some experiments that actually demonstrate or investigate the phenomenon you are interested in. Reading published papers and talking to those with relevant experience merely assists on development of the experimental framework so you can be reasonably assured that some useful results will be obtained at the end of it.

I’ll say it again for clarity – collation of existing published data is not research, it merely provides a framework within which to define your actual research. Turnbull has done none of his own research, he has merely read the results of other case studies and anecdotal testimony of private companies and tried to apply those results directly to his (our) situation without doing any actual experimental research himself, which is incorrect. I don’t mind that, given the argument that such research would be costly, the conclusion drawn from the initial investigation is that we can get an idea of the general framework within which we can define or at least approximate a situation roughly applicable to our scenario, but to suggest that your conclusions are directly applicable and accurate is disingenuously misleading. To suggest that such speculative application of only casually relative data comprises extensive and thorough ‘research’ is to both misunderstand the concept of research and to misrepresent the situation to those less capable of understanding the applicable parameters.

When you do research in economics on an economy wide scale there are a number of issues which prevent proper scientific method. Since you and Abel want to bash MT for gathering data as any macro-economist would I will explain them to you.

1. The sheer scale. The amount of resources required. It is often impossible to gather the resources to conduct a test.

2. The need for a control group. When you normally do research you need a control group so that you can isolate the effects of your experiment from other effects. e.g. This is why in drug trials they use a placebo.
As every economy is different it is impossible to have a control group and an experimental group.

3. Unintended consequences. If there were negative consequences the outcry would be horrendous despite the valuable information gained. Besides who would try to host these experiments then?

For these reasons they will gather data from existing projects and situations to form theories. The accuracy gained from working at real scale and economy wide far outweighs any benefits on controlling variables at a smaller scale due to increase complexities with scale up.

Unless you can define an experiment that has a reasonable budget yet emulates reality accurately?

“I don’t mind that, given the argument that such research would be costly, the conclusion drawn from the initial investigation is that we can get an idea of the general framework within which we can define or at least approximate a situation roughly applicable to our scenario, but to suggest that your conclusions are directly applicable and accurate is disingenuously misleading.”

Yes, I concede that such an experiment would be difficult and probably costly. My point was not that it should be pursued at any cost and that it is impossible to draw any meaningful or useful parallel from analysis of case studies, my point was that there has been no comprehensive research done that is directly applicable to our national infrastructure, to claim thatyou already know all the answers is an outright lie and to attempt to support an argument or claim based on only casually applicable examples by insisting that the research is exhaustive is a circular argument based on the same falsehoods perpetuated by the original erroneous claims.

Yes, as long as you are claiming that it is impossible to draw inferences from similar projects overseas.

What you have said makes sense as long as that is a concise summary.

No I do not agree with that as it is standard industry practice to do so. The accuracy of it is questionable, but that is up to the project manage to decide and apply relevant corrections for local conditions.

“to claim thatyou already know all the answers is an outright lie and to attempt to support an argument or claim based on only casually applicable examples by insisting that the research is exhaustive is a circular argument based on the same falsehoods perpetuated by the original erroneous claims. ”

-Can you please show me where this has been demonstrated? Or are you just trying to set an impossibly high standard?

What I’m saying is, Mr Turnbull continues to assert that his estimates are comprehensive, that his time frame is realistic, that there will be no significant time or cost variations and that it is not just technically feasible but demonstrably achievable within the projected cost estimates. He underpins Australia’s telecommunications future with his so-called ‘extensive’ research. And yet, when the evidence he quotes as supporting his assertions are demonstrated to be tenuous at best, often only casually applicable, frequently misunderstood or misinterpreted and almost universally misrepresented, he then says much of his calculations and assumptions are based on private consultation with telecommunications manufacturers and industry experts, and that detail cannot be released because it contains sensitive confidential material. What a shame that is.

He then chooses to counter critical arguments by characterising those who dare to question his assertions as fanatics and fanboiis instead of debating the merits of their (and his) arguments in a rational manner.

Then as justification for Turnbull’s statements and claims, we have Renai asserting that we can trust Mr Turnbull’s statements and calculations because he has done ‘extensive research’.

Quite apart from the fact that Mr Turnbull is a politician with a vested interest in the outcome of this debate, and thus not only would but certainly has chosen to omit any and all research, results, statistics and data that don’t agree with his stated objectives (essentially invalidating the applicability of his research as a source of meaningful evidence on the subject because it is necessarily biassed), my problem with his claims is that he is not using his research to develop a framework for further investigation, he is not stating that his research demonstrates FTTN is a compelling alternative within a certain margin of error and we need more local and specific detail to fill in the gaps; he is making absolute claims based on information that has not been demonstrated to be directly applicable to the problem he is trying to address.

So sure, Mr Turnbull’s done some homework. But it’s biassed investigation designed to reach a predetermined conclusion. It is not exhaustive, it is not independent, it is not thorough, it was not performed in good faith to determine the best outcome for the Australian people given our telecommunications options, and it is not research.

It could probably be described as a collection of data specifically designed to support Mr Turnbull’s position – I think that would be fairly accurate. I’d have a lot less problem with it if he stopped trying to claim that his plan is so thorough, so exhaustively researched that it is beyond criticism. I’d certainly have a lot less problem if people stopped trying to demonstrate the immutable strength of Mr Turnbull’s argument based merely on the assertion that he has ‘done extensive research’ when, in point of fact, he has done no such thing.

As Carl Sagan used to say, if you’re trying to convince people of the veracity of an extraordinary claim, you must be able to provide extraordinary evidence to support it. Mr Turnbull’s FTTN NBN proposal defines politically convenient performance targets that have no evidentiary basis in any existing real world environment while providing zero supporting evidence. Referring to ‘consultation’ with telecommunications equipment manufacturers without providing factual detail is meaningless.

Show us the hard data. Show us the engineering reports demonstrating 50mbps (and 25mbps) as a reliable, sustainable and consistent performance figure over copper indicative of the majority of Telstra’s CAN. Show us the studies demonstrating the maximum cable lengths attainable for 50mbps and 25mbps transmissions for varying wire diameters that we would commonly find used for last mile connections to Australian homes (and demonstrate how we can know what those wire grades are and their percentage utilisation in the existing copper network). Provide the investigations which analyse the effects of joins and corrosion on cable length and transmission performance at those wire grades.

None of that research would be proprietary, a trade secret or commercial in confidence. None of it would be particularly expensive or time consuming to investigate. All of it is vitally relevant to the proposed Coalition FTTN NBN plans.

Today we have a plan from the LNP for a network with unprecedented performance over what we know to be old, extensively degraded and poorly maintained copper wire infrastructure. The performance claims seem to be achieved by a prayer and a wish, because none of the ‘evidence’ provided thus far supports the stated minimum performance targets. To Lend weight and credibility to the Fantasy Network’s imaginary performance, the LNP have committed to a ‘guarantee’ with zero collateral, zero legislation and zero penalties for failure, making it not a guarantee but an election promise from a party with a history of flagrant dishonesty on the subject of the NBN.

All the ‘research’ in the world conducted by Mr Turnbull is utterly meaningless unless it results in meaningful and relevant evidence. Make no mistake – the claims the LNP are making about the performance of their FTTN network are extraordinary, so the evidence to support it must be as well. Extraordinary evidence, Mr Turnbull. Today we have none.

Economies of scale implies falling unit costs as the scale of network rollout increases. These are only substantial if you have large fixed costs. Think of the cost components of FTTH rollout. The variable cost components (paying some labourer a fixed wage an hour to trench a metre of fiber) probably account for over 90% of the cost of the rollout. The economies of scale from trenching fibre is practically non-existent because it is a highly laborious process done a metre at a time. How long does it take Jim’s Mowing to mow your lawn and your neighbour’s equivalent sized lawn? One and a half times it takes to mow your lawn (positive economies) or twice as long because he has to push the Victa twice the distance (zero economies)?

A good analogy.
The answer is considerably less, because he mows one lawn, then the next.. and the next for the entire street.
He does not need to trailer in his gear for the lawn on demand, load it all up and leave, then return next week for the neighbours lawn, leave again, etc. He most likely wouldnt mow the entire street in that situation, but the customers using the service are still paying for all that driving around.

Say it costs the customer $50 per lawn, you cant mow faster as pointed out above. Further it costs $40 to transport the mowing equipment, fuel, time, vehicle. With the street containing ten lawns to be serviced.

Wow he did it slightly cheaper overall, possibly faster than the first plan, yet it cost each customer using the service more. If you add just one more customer, the overall project costs would be identical, yet four lawns would remain untouched. That is the type of efficiency a blanket rollout delivers.

Yes I pulled the numbers out of the air, although they arent unrealistic and possibly more based on fact than some of the politicians numbers. I could even write them as a quote on a napkin!

> Wow he did it slightly cheaper overall, possibly faster than the first plan, yet it cost each customer using the service more. If you add just one more customer, the overall project costs would be identical, yet four lawns would remain untouched. That is the type of efficiency a blanket rollout delivers.

You do realise that the target for Labor’s NBNCo Corporate Plan is that only 70% of premises will connect. About 13% will choose wireless because it is cheaper.

“How long does it take Jim’s Mowing to mow your lawn and your neighbour’s equivalent sized lawn?”

That all depends. Jim’s Mowing will take a lot less time mowing your lawn and your neighbours lawn and his neighbour’s lawn if he does them all on the one day with one trip rather than doing your lawn on Monday, your neighbour on Wednesday and his neighbour on Friday.
Jim’s Mowing factors this additional cost into the job which is why cutting one lawn that is three times the size of another costs significantly less than three times as much.

“The economies of scale from trenching fibre is practically non-existent because it is a highly laborious process done a metre at a time.”

And the same trench has to be dug past just about every house whether it is to lay fibre to the node or fibre to the house. The difference is that if you are doing fibre to the node, you will have to open up that trench again and lay more cable to go fibre to the node to the intervening premises and if you are going to do it on a demand basis, you will have to open up that trench over and over.

Totally rediculous to expect it to be cheaper to build fiber one house at a time.

The $90b estimate is the cost of connecting FTTH to every premise (except wireless & satellite).

The whole logic of a FTTN/FTTPoD regime is that only a small minority of houses will be directly connected with fiber. Here’s a few simple questions to exercise the logic circuits of your engineering brain:

1. Which premises do you think are most likely to order a FTTPoD product? A premise which is relatively close to a node or far away? An urban premise or a rural premise? (25 points)

2. Is the average cost of the small minority of premises connected with FTTPoD most likely to be below or above the average cost of connecting FTTH to every premise? (25 points)

“Labor is offering those in ‘HFC areas’ gigabit fibre to their premise within the next decade. If you are offering those areas what I think you are offering, Mr Turnbull — that is, nothing at all — then you have completely failed the test of leadership and I will forthwith abandon what little faith I have had in your ability in the Communications portfolio.”

PS – I hope you might also be able to elaborate on this BT openreach example of “‘annual rental’ cost of £465 (AU$765)”. Presumably it is an ongoing fee? What exactly does this $63.75/mth fee include and will a similar fee apply here under the Coalition’s plan?

I can answer that- Openreach DO supply an FTTC (Naked Broadband) only product….but it is 66 pounds a month (lowest tier). Otherwise, you can have broadband for 10 pounds a month…..but you have to pay line rental on top of that and have a home phone. This is because Openreach have BYPASSED the problem of Bitstream VOIP and requiring reasonably complex hardware (like NBNCo’s NTD) by taking PSTN lines all the way back to the exchange after injecting the VDSL at the cabinet.

In other words, BT want to be paid line rental for their PSTN lines because people will use them for phonecalls they could otherwise make for basically nothing on their broadband….so they require that even though you only pay 10 pounds for broadband (up to 18Mbps and 50GB) you have to pay almost 40 pounds a month line rental…..welcome to the private incumbent market.

Thanks seven_tech. For some reason I didn’t see your reply until now, only Fibroid’s.

I guess what I was trying to ascertain was whether this annual fee was an additional fee that was only applicable to FoD connections, or whether it replaced an existing fee that you would pay on a FTTC connection. Sounds like you are saying the latter, though as you say unbelievably exorbitant. On further reading of the price list I see that the minimum period for the fibre extension is 36 months, so I assume that you are contracted to pay that annual fee for at least 3 years (and then ongoing if you keep the connection).

The mind boggles as to what the Coalition may eventually dream up but I’m sure that it will be out of reach of most households because Turnbull already perceives FTTH as an unnecessary luxury.

This, as I said, is likely a result of the way BT use PSTN lines back to the exchange. Turnbull has said that’s not going to happen here, though hasn’t provided any details. Fact is, we just don’t know at this stage. It’s unlikely we’ll see line rental though on FTTN….FoD however…..who knows.

But what we do know is how ‘line rental’ is charged for a voice service on the NBN Co FTTP.

This is a voice service hung off the UNI-V port, which to all intents and purposes to the residence works exactly the same way as a bog standard PSTN voice service, and they can still use their analogue phone.

Not many ISP’s offer a voice service off the UNI-V port yet, but Internode was one of the first and they charge you a monthly $20 plus any calls you make over and above the chosen BB data plan.

So your concern about a ‘BT like line rental charge’ occurring on FoD is conjecture , you need to direct your concern to what is happening now on the NBN.

No, for FoD that’s not relevant. A native FTTH is one thing- there is no alternative data source. FoD may use line rental, if, for example, Telstra do part of the work, to offset the cost. Or if the FTTN hasn’t been in for more than X years to try and recoup the operating/capital costs of installing FoD so early.

It is total conjecture, I never suggested it WOULD cost. Just that we really have no idea. We have no details. Both scenarios have an equal likelihood.

‘This, as I said, is likely a result of the way BT use PSTN lines back to the exchange. Turnbull has said that’s not going to happen here, though hasn’t provided any details. Fact is, we just don’t know at this stage. It’s unlikely we’ll see line rental though on FTTN….FoD however…..who knows’

… or is it when I showed you we have the equivalent of a line rental charge on a NBN Co FTTH voice service TODAY which is not conjecture you decided it wasn’t relevant for FoD anymore.

‘Just that we really have no idea. We have no details. Both scenarios have an equal likelihood.’

Indeed, but what we do know is there is monthly charge for a NBN Co FTTH voice service, so even if there is a charge that’s ok is it not, because it’s the same as your preferred Labor NBN model which you spruik endlessly.

Ok, look, what I am talking about is line rental based on FTTN. I don’t know and frankly don’t care about FoD. We have NO information whatsoever on it, other than the fact that it is inclusive of their policy. It may or may not have a “line rental” associated with it. The current NBN does NOT have a line rental. It works in a completely different way because it is fibre based bitstream and fibre bitsream is NOT PSTN. So I have no idea if line rental will be charged. It may be because of recouping capital costs or because of partnership with Telstra. It may simply be an upfront payment of X 000 dollars to install then whatever plan you’re on- I DON’T KNOW. And I was talking about FTTN

BT use line rental on FTTN connections REGARDLESS of if you use their phone system or not. This is because of the way they bypass PSTN lines to the exchange. Turnbull has said that won’t happen here but HASN’T given an indication therefore how it WILL happen. IF it happens the same way as the NBN, with FTTN based bitsream, they will likely do the same that they have done with the NBN- have a “lowest tier” speed of 12Mbps that they CHARGE as phone line, like the NBN. In which case they’ll be exactly the same EXCEPT- there has been no indication of what hardware would be used in this case. BT use a separate modem for their FTTN that DOES NOT allow a phone to be plugged in. FTTN here would need an NTD. It is perfectly possible, but we HAVE NO INFORMATION about it. So it is guesswork at this stage.

On FoD- your guess is as good as mine. FoD DOESN’T work the same way as straight FTTH in general, but it could be planned to. WE DON’T KNOW.

How many more times do I have to say WE DON’T KNOW before you’ll give up on trying to present something as fact that isn’t??

If the newly formed LNP NBN Co is taken over by British Telecom months after a Coalition win, and they import Openreach contractors to roll out FTTN here,and we change our currency to sterling , it could well be similar.

But I’d like to know if BT are defraying the up front cost of FoD with an additional annual fee, and whether the Coalition have a similar plan in mind, or if not does that mean that the up front cost will likely be higher (in comparison to BT published prices) as a result? Is that a valid question do you think?

It might be a valid question but you are not going to get any answers here or from the Coalition anytime soon.

Fibre on demand depends on Telstra playing nice with FTTN, it also depends on the ACCC approving the concept of FoD without giving said incumbent more market clout than it already has, and of course RSP’s approving the FoD product because they will be involved in flogging it.

Ask again around January 2014 assuming a Coalition win, which is not a given as much anymore, Kev’s back. :)

“The Coalition believes it will be possible to offer this kind of service on a similar basis as it is offered in the UK, where wholesale telco OpenReach is offering so-called ‘fibre on demand’ extension services at a price depending on how far premises are from their nearby node.”

You seem to be saying now that FoD itself is in some doubt, let alone how much it will actually cost those who wish to pursue it. No wonder the ALP are throwing around the $5000 figure, I don’t see how Turnbull can really prove them wrong in the absence of any substantial public information to the contrary.

Herein demonstrates the typical NBN detractor… they invent one set of rules for the NBN and NBN supporters another set for themselves and everything else everywhere…lol.

I love the way you ignore most of my comments (pick and choose which to reply to) because you have no answer and realise, going AWOL is better than further proving your foolishness.

I also love it when have been FOUND TELLING ABSOLUTE PORKIES – caps used for added oomph)… like you have here and you try to limit everything said to the one comment you just made, as if all your other conflicting, contradictory and to be honest ridiculously immatutre comments prior (even ones made earlier today and at this very forum), don’t exist…

Seriously if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes (yes two eyes, ooh) I wouldn’t believe my fellow Aussies could be so bigoted, buy yet here you are :(

If l had a credit card with ‘No Limit’ l could be driving around in a Ferrari, but l don’t have such a credit card. Then again if l did have such a credit card l would not run my card up just for the sake of having the most expensive car in my neighborhood. All l need is a reliable car which gets me from A to B in a safe and timely manner, and most importantly a car which l can afford……. Despite all the Labor spin knocking the Coalitions policy on NBN… At least they are trying to live within their means.

If i had a credit card with no limit and my hot water system which is 10 years old and leaking is about to die, (even the plumber tells me its about to die), i dont spend half the cost of the unit paying someone for a patch work fix to keep it going for 1 more year only to have to pay the full cost to replace the whole thing in a years time.

Sure, let’s use your misleadingly simplistic analogy. You need a new car. One car can seat two people, costs X to buy and Y to run. Another car costs X+10% (slightly more expensive), seats five, and costs Y-10% to run. Most of the time you only need two seats, but about 10% of the time you need three or more seats.

You also expect the car to last at least 5 years, and maybe as many as 10, and you’re planning to have children within 3 to 4 years.

A Maserati has absolutely no significance to the NBN debate… perhaps an analogy in relation to the road on which the Maserati propels along could have. ..and I note you guys would like your Maserati to be driven on part asphalt and part dirt :/ …)

So if you and your mate want to make silly statements which appease silly people, please do so at a Bolt forum near you and leave the serious stuff here to those who are serious…

Actually I popped into the truck at the Avalon airshow earlier this year, they looked bit lonely, everyone was looking at the air display, I asked the guy would it take much to modify the signage to FTTN.

Ones a brand new network that isn’t reliant on powered electronics and is highly resistant to environmental issues, the others a mix of old and new that needs power/batteries to every cabinet and will still have issues with rain/flood. Consider also that the LBN hasn’t even had all it’s costs sorted out yet, there is still a question of the number of nodes needed, the cost to access the CAN, etc.

Now tell me again which ones more reliable and financially responsible?

Actually, no he didn’t. He quoted required government funding for the LNP plan- $29.5 billion. And required government funding for the NBN- $30.5 billion. Difference- $900 million to the government. It is irrelevant that another $13.4 billion is required (to the taxpayer it is irrelevant) because that will be provate debt.

$37.4 billion is the total CAPEX of the NBN, but NOT all of that is coming from the government.

Incorrect, both the required funding figures of $29.5b for the LNP and $44.1b contain both Government equity and external debt components, you cannot try and get the Labor figure less because it doesn’t compare too well by subtracting billions without doing the same for the LNP required funding figure.

But of course you don’t want the LNP figure to appear less than it already is.

it’s also clearly stated in the NBNCo business plan that government funding for the NBN will peak at $30.4b and that “NBN Co will seek external funding from banks and financial markets without explicit guarantees from the Shareholder Ministers, as early as possible.” for the rest

Both your efforts to downplay the required Labor funding in comparison to the Coalition figures are admirable, especially avoiding quoting the Labor required funding figure of $44.1b , quoting $30.5b over and over and glibly dismissing the $44.1b as ‘the rest’ as if it is petty cash.

Now, let’s look at the Coalition policy document on cost comparisons which they do in a nicely laid out table in red for Labor and blue for Coalition (get the colors?) on Page 15.

There is no direct comparison of the $30.5b ‘Government funding’ Labor figure, the Coalition have not provided that breakup, but you have decided to put it against the $29.5b required funding figure anyway.

You see the CAPEX figures as I quoted above which we can directly compare because the Coalition have given us their CAPEX figure and so has Labor, in the 2012-2015 NBN Co Business plan.

We then come to the next direct comparison figures of Required funding: $29.5b Coalition and $44.1b Labor.

See the subscript ’19’ on Required funding, it states:

“Required funding is the money a new project or company needs to to raise (as equity or debt) to reach a point where it can sustain itself without assistance.”

BTW Conroy thought the Coalition funding figure of $29.5b was debt.

“This compares with the $29.5 billion that Malcolm Turnbull intends to borrow to build an inadequate network that will be obsolete by the time it is built.”

Sorry, but that was a giant strawman. The Coalition have been careful never to mention private debt directly because at the moment, they have no way of knowing whether their plan will make a return attractive enough for it- there IS no breakdown because they dont have the numbers. They are HOPING it will, when NBNCo. crunch the numbers. But the fact is, they are expecting something that is going to cost 2/3 of the NBN and which they want people to pay ‘substantially less’ for, is going to create a viable business plan. It may, I’m not saying it is impossible, but when you actually even crunch the basic numbers, assuming they want wholesale prices to even be 1/4 less expensive, you get a return of about 3-4%. That is NOT enough for private debt to be attracted.

By the way, I never said Labor’s was cheaper or ignored the fact that it didn’t have a total unlevered debt of $44.1 billion. I said that the other $13.7 billion on top of the $30.5 billion was from private debt so it means SQUAT to taxpayers bottom line. I was comparing the cost of the 2 projects based on what a GOVERNMENT will have to outlay (or BORROW as Conroy put it- he wasnt talking about debt, he was talking about raising bonds which is often referred to as a government ‘borrowing’ money). THAT is what Turnbull has been harping on for the last 3 years. Cost to the ‘Australian people’. Total project cost is only relevant to NBNCo. and their rate of payback.

Fact- Any network built by either party, with the current information we have, will cost almost the same to the Australian people.

Precisely. No one is trying to claim the NBN will cost less to build than the business plan accounts for. What we object to is you misleadingly conflating the total build cost as the cost to the government, which is simply wrong, inaccurate, false or otherwise known as an inability to follow basic facts (even when they are spelled out to you. Extensively. Repeatedly).

Further to Seven_tech’s point on attractiveness of the FTTN plan to private investment, in comparison to the real NBN you’re talking about a project that is subject to more competition (thus smaller market share), that is inferior (as a product to consumers) which will result in lower demand (thus lower sales) and which will cost more to operate (higher OPEX resulting from increased cost of maintenance and cost of supplying the network equipment with power). So it will be less profitable and more expensive to operate. Explain the implications for that on ROI to your prospective private investors and see how far that gets you.

As usual we are working on actuals and those like Fibroid on their crusade, will talk down, twist and spin every positive NBN outcome , whilst simultaneously fluffing-up (read – lie about) their masters plan..,

‘The Coalition have been careful never to mention private debt directly because at the moment, they have no way of knowing whether their plan will make a return attractive enough for it’

So once I posted what the Coalition policy actually says about ‘Required funding’ and footnote 19 you decide to move the goal posts from there is no private debt in the $29.5b, to ‘they have no way of knowing’, which means you don’t know either.

I noticed you let the Conroy remark about the $29.5b the Coalition INTENDS TO BORROW go without comment.

‘there IS no breakdown because they dont have the numbers. ‘

Yeah I know, but that doesn’t mean that $29.5b will never ever contain a private debt component does it, it also doesn’t mean you and Tinman_au can make it up for them.

‘Fact- Any network built by either party, with the current information we have, will cost almost the same to the Australian people.’

No that is not fact because the fact is FTTN is cheaper to rollout ‘with the current information we have’ because it uses a major component of existing infrastructure, the Labor NBN requires that infrastructure to be shut down after paying billions to the infrastructure owners to do so and you start from scratch with a brand new fixed line rollout all the way to the residence.

FTTN is also faster to rollout, so the majority of residences targeted for FTTN will be off ADSL sooner than waiting for the interminably delayed Labor FTTH rollout, which means FTTN revenue flows are sooner than from a Labor FTTH rollout.

Ummm, tinman_au just showed you that private debt is ON TOP of the $29.5 billion….

I notice you didn’t read my whole post where I specifically mentioned Conroy saying ‘borrowed’ is the colloquial term?? Nobody has ever said that saying ‘borrowed money’ isn’t correct. Only TAXPAYERS money.

Once again tinman_au has shown you exactly where they’ve said private funding is above and beyond the PUBLIC funding maximum of $29.5 billion.

It is fact that FTTN IS cheaper to rollout from scratch and under certain FTTN circumstances. If you have 1km loops, 400 premises on a node and reasonable copper on every node, no question it is cheaper. But Turnbull has promised 25Mbps, which require MINIMUM 800m, less on degraded copper or even copper replacement and anywhere from a few dozen houses (mini-nodes he’s just started talking about) to 300 premises per node. There is absolutely no guarantee it will be cheaper than FTTH here in this scenario. Especially seeing as we’re seeing FTTH per premises at around $2300, much lower than the Coalition even believed it could be, WHICH THEY ADMITTED.

And on faster to rollout- from scratch, yes. But NOT when FTTH is in progress after years of planning. You’re kidding yourself if you think it’ll be a quick, easy turnaround to FTTN after everything that has been mobilised for FTTH.

You are taking everything the Coalition are saying as verbatim when it is all barely even an idea yet. There is YEARS of work to do to get it started, not months. The copper condition across the majority of the country is a month’s long job minimum. Yes, the NBN is delayed and slow. But it IS happening and delivering speeds it promised with prices lower or the same than ADSL and HFC in the majority of cases. Saying the Coalition’s plan WILL be cheaper, faster or less expensive is nothing but speculation.

Seriously Fibroid, it’s not rocket science, you can spout CAPEX as much as you like, it doesn’t change the “peak government funding” of either project one iota.

Malcom Turnbull’s policy document clearly states that “The statement of expectations will specify a limit on the public capital available to NBNCo. This limit will be $29.5 billion.” Any private investment on the LBN will be over an above that.

And page 80 of the NBNCo Corporate Plan clearly shows:

9.11.2 Profile of Long Term Funding Scenarios

The modelling of the long term funding profile assume s that NBN Co will seek external funding from
banks and financial markets without explicit guarantees from the Shareholder Ministers, as early as
possible.

For the purpose of the 2012-15 Corporate Plan, it is assumed that peak Government Equity will be
$30.4 billion. In this scenario, NBN Co has embedded debt funding cost s into the financial model. It is expected that total external funding would contribute up to 31% of the total funding to FY2021.

Both are very clear about how much public (aka “taxpayer dollars”) funding will be required. The NBNCo Corporate plan is the only one that clearly states how much private funding is required, Malcolm’s policy document only mentions that “Private sector involvement will be encouraged in each case”, but doesn’t actually state if they expect those “private sector entities” to input funding themselves, or how much.

tl;dr: In public funding terms, there is only $900 million difference between the two plans, with any other required funds being raised from private investment/banks.

Yes I know what the NBN Co 2012-2015 Corporate plan says, it states the ESTIMATE is $30.4b peak Government funding and a ESTIMATE of $13.7b debt, add them together gives a required funding of $44.1b.

This compares with the required funding estimate of $29.5b which is the grand total like the Labor $44.1b is, the Coalition have not broken it up int the two components, which doesn’t mean you therefore are free to make it up for them.

Your original argument was apples-to-bananas (Total funding for the NBN vs public funding of the LBN only).

Technically and as things stand, the LBN is “cheaper” (but only by $900m) and there are still things to be resolved with the LBN that might hit the public purse a lot for more yet.

The discussion has only ever been about public funding and I (and I suspect many others) don’t particularly care how much private capital/debt either plan raises/accrues (as long as they don’t overburden themselves and become a public liability).

I ask seven_tech questions you see it is getting awkward so you answer with something else, I ask you questions there is a awkward silence gap then seven_tech decides to try and help you out, and the alternating cycle continues.

Are you and seven_tech the same person or do you have some sort of silent pact to try and help each other out when you are being hammered?

Most other Labor NBN anti-Coalition supporters use the same strategy, you can almost feel the ‘help me here someone’ crying out desperately from the discussion flow.

Wow. One question. Which I’ve already answered 3 times. The total maximum PUBLIC cost of the Coalition’s policy is $29.5 billion. Anything beyond this is private debt.

And the second question isn’t even a question- it’s nonsense designed to imitate a question. Why are they on the same line?? I dunno, why did Turnbull say the NBN WILL cost $94 billion. The answer is the same- because it makes them look better. It’s called politics.

‘The total maximum PUBLIC cost of the Coalition’s policy is $29.5 billion. Anything beyond this is private debt.’

What is that figure of ‘anything beyond this’, what I mean by a figure is a dollar figure direct from the Coalition policy that states their rollout will cost more than $29.5b and the extra dollars the exact amount of which you are going to provide us with will be all from private debt.

Wait, so because I can’t GIVE you a figure that might or might not be beyond $29.5 billion, therefore it is never going to cost MORE than $29.5 billion?? Wow, that’s a strawman and a half.

Turnbull has promised the PUBLIC funding of his policy will not exceed $29.5 billion. He has also said his policy may include private debt. NEITHER of them excludes the possibility (likelihood at this stage without more information on rollout price and remediation costs) of private debt being BEYOND the $29.5 billion.

Phew! we got there in the end, so you have no stated figures that the total funding requirement of a Coalition rollout will be more than the stated $29.5b nor do you have any Coalition policy statement that indicates any funding above that figure (assuming there is that requirement) will be all private debt.

Ok, now you’re ignoring things purposefully. The NBN has a estimated CAPEX of $37.5 billion. But they AREN’T currently projecting it will all be required! Yes, it is an estimate, but it IS currently an OVER estimate. Which would mean that the $30.5 WOULDN’T necessarily all be required.

The Coalition $29.5 billion is a maximum FOR THE GOVERNMENT ie PUBLIC funds. It is NOT a maximum TOTAL funding. Tinman_au has shown you this 3 times now.

As this stand currently, NBNCo is actually running well under budget, so I expect the actual situation will end up more in favour (financially) of the NBN. There are still hidden/unresolved costs that need to be addressed in the LBN plan.

The Coalition $29.5 billion is a maximum FOR THE GOVERNMENT ie PUBLIC funds. It is NOT a maximum TOTAL funding.’

Hang on I thought you said:

‘ there IS no breakdown because they dont have the numbers.’

If there is no breakdown why are you breaking it down for them by saying it is only the Government funding component and not the TOTAL funding.

So what is the total Coalition total funding then, and why is is it on the same line as the Labor total funding in the table and why is explained in the footnote as it can be sourced from equity or debt?

/sigh $29.5b, there is no “private” equity/debt defined for the LBN, because they haven’t disclosed that yet (it’s only a policy, not a corporate plan). They do, however, mention that they are looking for private investment in some areas, they just don’t list how much that will be.

and why is is it on the same line as the Labor total funding in the table and why is explained in the footnote as it can be sourced from equity or debt?

If you are referring to the Liberal policy, they did it because it makes their policy look more “fair dinkum”/competitive, in a similar way to how they were dishonest about the cost of the NBN being $94b…

And I’d also like to note at this point, that Malcolm’s plan will actually cost more once it turns into an actual business plan that does incorporate private funding and it has to take into account stuff like his extra nodes (which he has already said he’ll need) and the cost of the CAN (which he thinks will be $0, but Telstra thinks will be at least $19b).

Much like Labor had to adjust their initial figures, Malcolm isn’t “done” on that front yet himself…

“Telstra has launched a damning attack on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s proposed re-valuation of its copper access network, claiming that changing the rules mid-stream will strand nearly $19 billion of value from recoverable depreciation costs. It also charges that the ACCC’s preference to exclude the effects of inflation when quantifying its historic network costs has slashed over $15b from the regulator’s estimate of its fixed network value.”

Sorry that doesn’t translate directly into this is what we will charge the Coalition NBN Co to use copper for FTTN over and above the $11b we are already legally contracted to the existing NBN Co to shut down the copper as each exchange area reaches a 90% FTTH footprint.

“Sorry that doesn’t translate directly into this is what we will charge the Coalition NBN Co to use copper for FTTN over and above the $11b we are already legally contracted to the existing NBN Co to shut down the copper as each exchange area reaches a 90% FTTH footprint.”

I’m sorry? “We”? Are you Telstra now??

Telstra it’s self is the one to decide if the CAN is decommissioned, it isn’t a requirement of the agreement”

Please note (if you do read the Explanatory Memorandum), there is a lot of difference between “Copper Services” and “Copper Network”. The “network” is the underlying infrastructure, the services that run over that, like broadband/voice plans.

“Telstra will continue to retain and operate its Next G® wireless network, Next IP™ core fibre network, backhaul fibre network and HFC Cable Network (for delivery of Pay TV Services). Telstra will also retain and operate its Copper Network and will continue to provide broadband services over its HFC Cable Network as relevant outside areas where the NBN Fibre Network has been deployed.
Telstra will also retain ownership of the infrastructure accessed by NBN Co (except for Lead ‑ in Conduits).”

Emphasis mine. If there is no “NBN Fibre Network”, Telstra retains and operates it’s Copper Network. The Explanatory Memorandum doesn’t mention anywhere that NBNCo can just use the Copper Network as it likes (which is good, this isn’t China after all), just that it moves it’s fixed line and HFC customers to the Fibre network. Telstra it’s self decides (quoted from the document) “depending on the circumstances, for Telstra to decommission, relocate, or dispose of the underlying infrastructure.” (and as the CAN would no long be used under the NBN, it makes sense to forgo on-going costs in keeping it around).

Yes got all of that , your $19b sourced figure still doesn’t translate into that is what Telstra will charge a Coalition NBN Co to use their copper for FTTN.

There are too many unknown variables in the Telstra FTTN/NBN Co/ACCC/RSP negotiation, and of course the added complexity of the existing agreement that has to be taken into account.

I mentioned before it doesn’t need to be a straight out purchase of the Telstra copper in the first place, it may be a NBN Co/Telstra partnership with Telstra and the NBN Co sharing wholesale revenue from FTTN RSP’s.

The NBN Co could lease the copper component from Telstra so there is no upfront payment of $19b or any other $xxb figure , the leasing agreement could be structured with periodical payments passing between the NBN Co and Telstra based on the number of residences using it and a defined end point timeline.

I agree that there are a lot of deals that could be done to lower whatever price Telstra expects to charge, but based on the Liberal past record in this area, I’m not sure that it will actually be a good deal for the average Aussie in the long run. As one example, a deal could be done for Telstra to be able to charge line rental as a sort of lease…

Well it helps to ignore the broadband connect program that enabled regional and rural exchanges with DSLAM’s for ADSL2+, and they were activated in weeks of the funds being made available.

It also help to ignore the broadband connect program with a substantial satellite subsidy that allowed rural residences to connect to the internet because they were out of reach of ADSL.

It also helps if you ignore the Mobiles for Highway scheme that constructed wireless towers along our major highway in Australia increasing the wireless footprint extensively, especially out of the large cities, and allowing all carriers to access to them.

I was referring to major infrastructure and not only in the communication area.

It is well accepted by most commentators that the Coalition’s record on infrastructure was very poor. I suppose you can expect to finance middle class welfare and give tax cuts to get re-elected and have enough money to spend on major infrastructure.

I am not getting confused at all but then again I am not blindly in love with a political party. I can see things as they are.

They are certainly flaws in Labor’s records but putting middle class welfare and tax cuts above infrastructure ain’t one of them. You will find that even your political masters would agree that infrastructure building isn’t their forte. Remember, according to them it should be left to private industry.

So, instead of idiotic and childish cheap shots, try to give coherent and arguable answers. I appreciate that this may be beyond your capacity but it would be nice to see you at least try.

I am not sure what deal or deals with Telstra you are on about, and the LNP lost Government before they could implement their planned infrastructure rollout in 2007 which was OPEL which was not a bad thing, I wasn’t impressed with OPEL at all.

“All l need is a reliable car which gets me from A to B in a safe and timely manner, and most importantly a car which l can afford”

You could take a bus. A bus ticket is even cheaper. You don’t need a car to drive directly to your doorstep when you could just walk to a bus stop and get around like that. It’s cheaper and saves the expense of the government using tax payer funds to roll out an extravagant road directly to your house/location.

“It’s cheaper and saves the expense of the government using tax payer funds to roll out an extravagant road directly to your house/location.”

When there is already a rail network paid for by the taxpayer, why waste taxpayer funds for roads for buses. Just stick to trains and walk, we are getting too fat anyway so a good walk would be an improvement and we won’t have those ugly asphalt roads everywhere, maybe replace those asphalt roads with fields and have sheep and cattle grazing instead

I thought all assetts depreciated?? Are we all of a sudden on a planet where the trees are made of money?? Why won’t somebody tell me why the rules of exponential growth are no longer relevant?? Can I stop laughing yet???

The LCP policy makes as much sense as to say the way to solve the housing “crisis” is to allow land to be subdivided without made roads and other services and let those who want them pay for them to be provided.

Lucky for you they will charge you nothing. Just like you can get a brand new shiny iphone 5 for $0,. or buy a brand new car $0 driveway.

Awesome $0, So whats the catch? with $0 NBN installation? They slug you over the next 25 years to recoop the installation cost. I would rather pay upfront then pay the cost + interest, unless you plan on dying in the next few year you be worse off paying nothing upfront.

Do agree that you need the – up to or possibly, in front of the $5000.
But really who is more likely going to want the FOD, Someone 100m from the node getting close to max speed. Or the poor bugger at 800m only getting 25 when the weather is good and it hasn’t rained for awail.

Which business is more likely to have ordered a fibre optic connection from AAPT or TPG? A business located within a mile of a fibre backbone ring circling the capital cities, or a business located 10 miles away?

Imagine there was a node placed at one end of a long street containing a row of 50 houses. The residents of each house operate a home-based digital photography business. Now, assume each premise would enjoy an equivalent incremental benefit from having access to optic fibre of $X regardless of distance from the node.

Now, the cost of ordering FTTPoD, $Y, increases linearly the further the premise is from the node. $Y, which varies from premise to premise, is effectively the “hurdle rate” for deciding whether to invest in FTTPoD or not. Rationally, only the premises where the incremental benefit exceeds the incremental cost, $X > $Y, would order a FTTPoD. And, all things being equal, these premises will tend to be the ones located closest to the node because the “hurdle rate” is the lowest.

The underlying logic of FTTN/FTTPoD is that you only do a direct fibre hook-up where it is cost-effective to do so. Assuming that there is no systematic correlation between “benefit gained from FTTP” and “distance of premise from node”, these premises will tend to be those located closest to the node.

(P.S. Apologies to grammar nazis. Yes, I know there is no singular “premise”.)

If I’m 100m from the node and getting 60+ megs download. it may cost $1000 to upgrade { est }. I probably wouldn’t for the next 3-5 yrs as the cost to speed increase isn’t really worth it at the moment.

But if I’m 800m away and only getting 25 megs, then it may cost up to $5000 [ maybe more or less ] to upgrade. I would probably pay it.

My unclear point was that the high dollar figure coming from premises at the end of copper runs, being the ones who would want FOD if they could afford it.

Yes, you’re right. The further away you are from the node, the greater the performance increase you will get from ordering FoD and the more expensive it is to hook-up fibre. However, assuming a scenario where the node density is such that you’re guaranteed, say, 25mbit, the vast majority of households will not fork out the thousands of dollars required just to get faster broadband. They won’t do it. Only the rare instances of some guy operating a digital photography business at the very end of a copper run who’s generating enough revenue to justify the cost will take up FoD.

However, assuming a scenario where the node density is such that you’re guaranteed, say, 25mbit, the vast majority of households will not fork out the thousands of dollars required just to get faster broadband.

True, under that scenario, it’d mostly be the Clive Palmer’s and Gina Rinehart’s that would be getting it…

Ever since my ISP bumped up quotas for the same monthly charge, I’ve downloading full Blu-rays at a healthy clip over my zero contention, point-to-point copper line despite the fact that my speed tops out at 6Mbit. The only thing stopping me from downloading a sh-tload more isn’t the line speed or last mile congestion… but the data quota. And why do ISPs impose quotas? Because of network congestion outside of the last mile access network! If you want to spend billions more to facilitate greater traffic, pour it into transit links… My 6Mbit copper line is massively under-utilised because of upstream congestion.

What does Labor NBN do? Pour tens of billions into last mile network and then slap on artificial CVC congestion bottleneck!

Really? Blu rays? That’s interesting. I wasn’t aware there was a legal course for downloading blu ray files of movies?….

Also, zero contention??? Seriously? Do you have a business SLA for guaranteed throughput do you? ALL ADSL is contended. Just because you can’t use enough bandwidth to see it doesn’t mean it isn’t. Standard residential contention is 1:20 or 30. But as you have only 6Mbps down, you wouldn’t add enough to total throughput to max out the contention even in busy times. And uploads? Well, it’s entirely dependent on where you are on the node as to if you’ll get much in that department on FTTN.

I’m sorry, but there is no practicable contention on ANY last mile. Even GPON is so low with current speeds it IS basically uncontented. When you speak of contention, you’re almost always talking beyond the network aggregation point. Perhaps you’re not aware of that?

You share access to the internet with others, at the DSLAM, which is then either backed into a PoP or aggregated onto the ISPs backhaul.

So whilst the copper tail you use, is used by you, the fibre pair to your house is basically the same deal. A single pair terminated to an aggregation point.

It’s a bit of an irrelevant point to be making, don’t you think?

Of course, on copper the upload speed is not comparable to fibre. Cloud storage, content creation services, media services, VPN, et-all live or die on upload speed and reliability.

The two things that copper cannot offer. At any price.

It’s kind of you to take on the responsibility of being the “default” internet user, by the way, but whenever someone suggests they are the epitome of average, I tend to wonder as to the logic that leads to such a decision.

Empirical evidence overseas is that subscribers would rather downgrade to a lower speed tier than spend an extra $5 to upgrade to a higher speed tier. This is why fibre is priced same as adsl in Japan and South Korea to encourage otherwise tepid take-up. Do you think households which exhibit such behaviour will spend thousands of dollars to get a fibre optic connection if FoD was available?

You’re basing this on the idea that people have only, and exclusively, upgraded their connection speed and type based upon the fact that overall bandwidth cost has decreased over time.

While it is true is that economic constraints have dominated the upgrade path of most users, but they are no means the exclusive reason people have upgraded.

If that were the case, people would have stayed on 56k because they have no need or desire for any more bandwidth, and the continued reducing cost of 56k equipment would mean consumers would want to put their money elsewhere.

In effect, the continual drop of prices have allowed users to stay ahead of their constraints. If the prices were stagnate, they would only upgrade if and when they are justified by consumption habits.

In effect, this is the only justifiable reason FTTN is being actively considered: if you take the drop in prices out of it, most people will be more than happy with the Coalition offer. However, also what you fail to understand is that while people could only upgrade when their consumption habits, rather than economic constraints, allow for it, providers of these services will have to charge more for basic access, creating an economic disincentive to upgrade even when your consumption habits justify it, just so that said providers can afford to maintain (let alone upgrade) their network.

In essence: the Internet relies on over-subscription to fuel growth. The fact that people order more quota than the need to, the fact that people get plans at 100Mbps when they only need 25Mbps is the very reason continued investment in infrastructure is possible.

Tell me, how many of your day to day tasks justify the 6Mbps you have? How many of your day to day tasks justify then upgrade from HSPA+ to LTE. I’d say none. You could get away with, quite comfortably, about 1Mbps and UMTS respectively. Which is actually the point you have been arguing all along, except what you fail to release, unless you are the zen type who perfectly balances their quotas with actual usage to within a few percentage points, you have in fact been practising the very thing you detest NBN supporters for doing: thinking they need more than they actually do.

And the only difference between you and us is scale: you do it on a personal level, we consider it on a national level. Because we have noticed, and understood, the intrinsic pattern that every user suffers from, and exploited it to it’s logical conclusion.

There will be, and is demand for 100Mbps+ services like only modified HFC and FTTH can offer (but not FTTN) that justifies the extra investment for the NBN, and yes, most of the users of this service could get away with less, but they won’t.

And if you were a business, you would exploit this, for profit. Which is why government intervention is necessary here. You can argue that allowing companies to continue to exploit customers for profit by taking the risk off them isn’t the role of government, and I respect that, I always have. If you do that, we will start to argue the secondary benefits of the network.

The problem is, the people have spoken, and the majority of them want government intervention in this sector. They feel they are entitled to it. So, the policy you support over ours does not engage in the idealogical argument of if we should, only, and it pains me to point this out because the arguments were far more interestingbefore the policy change, how much we should be investing.

N.B. This variable connection charge will be raised in addition to the £500.00 fixed connection charge

96% of premises are expected to be within 2km of the nearest NGA Aggregation Node, and these will be covered by distance bands A to G.

Approximately 4% of premises are 2km or further from the exchange, and although we are able to provide service to these premises, the costs to do so reflect the greater distances over which we would need to build the network to provide service.

EMMA ALBERICI: But you have said in the past that you will be delivering fibre to hospitals, to schools, to universities, and to any home that wants the highest possible broadband speeds so you will essentially be disturbing it as much as or, you know, to a great extent eventually when you upgrade it which your policy plan suggests?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, but that’s a jumble of

EMMA ALBERICI: No, it’s not a jumble, I mean eventually…

MALCOLM TURNBULL: It is a complete jumble.

EMMA ALBERICI: …Your policy proposal says eventually you will upgrade the entire system to fibre, that that is an option.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: To the premise, that’s not our policy proposal.

EMMA ALBERICI: To never extend it to the premises?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, we’re saying it’s an option, it’s an option to do that and it may well be that we’ll do that, when I say we’ll do that, a future government may do that, who knows, many years into the future. But the point is, the problem with the project at the moment is that you’ve got so much disturbance happening so quickly all at the same time, 15,000 contractors next year, and it has this resonance with pink batts where you’ve got a project that has suddenly grown, you’ve got thousands of contractors all working, of course they should all be following the asbestos management procedures. Of course they should be. But the more people you have doing this stuff, particularly if they’re doing it for the first time, just as we saw with the pink batts, the more likely it is you will have people who don’t follow the rules to the letter. It becomes a much more difficult management issue. It becomes much more costly and, of course, imposes higher risks and our approach is less costly, faster to deploy and does impose fewer risks because you are disturbing much less asbestos containing material. That’s a fact.

It’s pretty clear that they want FoD included, it’s in the policy document:

State or local governments, utilities or investors may have interest in ownership and funding of fibre rollouts in certain areas for a number of reasons: in response to user requests (or users committing to particular services); to leverage replacement or deployment of other infrastructure; because FTTP is seen as meeting a policy objective; or on a commercial basis. NBNCo will report to an incoming Coalition government within 180 days on the economic and operational feasibility of co-funded FTTP deployment.

Fibre co-funders will provide at least 50 per cent net (incremental) funding for the proposal. Any other
financial or ownership arrangements would be a matter for negotiation between NBNCo and a co-funder(s) but must be consistent with NBNCo’s wholesale open-access obligations.

Of course, this is an added threat to their base funding with Optus (and no doubt other RSP’s) developing plans to carry the cost of that deployment if the user locks in to a contract…they may end up with a lot more getting FoD than they expect.

“State or local governments, utilities or investors may have interest in ownership and funding of fibre rollouts ”

“Fibre co-funders will provide at least 50 per cent net (incremental) funding for the proposal. Any other
financial or ownership arrangements would be a matter for negotiation between NBNCo and a co-funder(s) but must be consistent with NBNCo’s wholesale open-access obligations.”

As I see it two options.
a) Multiple mini monopolies using NBN infrastructure and core systems, transits, backbones and nodes and the Telstra underground infrastructure leased by NBN.

“matter for negotiation between NBNCo and a co-funder(s) but must be consistent with NBNCo’s wholesale open-access obligations.”

How will that work to whose benefit?, the private fibre network partially funded by the NBN is to be locking in the customers for how many years considering the higher private sector funding cost or leased or sold at what cost to the NBN.

b) The Talk is over the number of installers, so same work, same number of installers, smaller job lots, effectively higher private sector funding costs with higher and quicker ROI, using the Telstra in ground infrastructure that the NBN has paid $Billions to lease for just the last “Mile”.
Pigs at the trough or what

The way I see it, is “investors” can mean RSP’s (in fact Optus has already said they are investigating long term contracts where they’ll cover the cost of FoD). Malcolm may well find this is actually a lot more popular than he expects, and as he’ll be picking up the tab for 50% of it, it could well blow his budget.

Yes I read that article, however I see it as an opportunity for the Greenfield operators as well. They were able to do estates and new developments especially business developments and shopping centres etc as the majority of the work is Greenfield, with the only public arena component being the trunk fibre to the point of interconnect. Now they will have access to Telstra’s Pits and Ducts with NBN effectively paying for Telstra to do the Pit and Duct remediation. I would suspect Opticomm for example would have more fibre services than NBN, but all Greenfield – a great profit making opportunity for them at our expense

‘Malcolm may well find this is actually a lot more popular than he expects, and as he’ll be picking up the tab for 50% of it, it could well blow his budget.’

Let me get this straight, so only having to fund 50% of a FoD rollout in some areas where it could be be so popular that it could well blow the budget, where as funding 100% of a FTTH rollout which is apparently is the preferable ‘cost effective’ option as per the Labor NBN will never blow the budget?

No Fibroid, it doesn’t work that way. Yes, FTTN takes advantage of economies of scale, but the FoD aspect of it doesn’t. And that, dear Fibroid, is what you were asking about. That is why you moved the goal posts.

I explained why, in 3 simple points. FoD, the key is the “oD”, doesn’t take advantage of economies of scale, and leaves parts of the infrastructure (the parts that made FTTN possible) redundant, compared to FTTH which does take advantages of these economies of scale.

This means if FoD is popular the project will end up, including the FTTN component, costing more, because of these reasons.

Yes, FTTN is cheaper than FTTH when you have a pre-existing copper network to utilise, I have never argued otherwise. Now, stop trying to obfuscate the argument and concede the point so we can all move on with our lives.

Yes only because he doesn’t want the Australian audience to know the pricing of bring FOD.

FOD is only mentioned on a single page, page 11 of the Coalition Policy.

It does not give me enough confidence that:

1. Pricing to install.
2. Keep the “promise” of Fibre-on-Demand” since the liberals are harping on the Pink Batt issues.
3. Knowing the difference in pricing of Fibre-on-Demand and a full GPON Network rollout (~$2400 or so per premises).

It’s as seven_tech says, weasel wording.

And as I said before, Coalition Party are treating everyone of us like a business.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, we’re saying it’s an option, it’s an option to do that and it may well be that we’ll do that, when I say we’ll do that, a future government may do that, who knows, many years into the future.

is difficult to understand?

Turnbull says that FoD MAY be an option and a future government MAY do it many years into the future.

Angels MAY fly out of my arse many years into the future, who knows.

There I just did a Turnbull. I’m not saying angels won’t fly out of my arse, just that they may sometime in the future.

“When you do research in economics on an economy wide scale there are a number of issues which prevent proper scientific method.”

This does not make collection of data from other populations more legitimate or indeed, qualifies it as being sufficient or adequate.

“The need for a control group.”

Not all research requires a control group. Research involving the development of a network are unlikely to necessitate one.

“Unintended consequences. If there were negative consequences the outcry would be horrendous despite the valuable information gained. Besides who would try to host these experiments then?

What? This is a new one. How could you possibly account for unintended consequences, if you had no idea it could happen? This is why they are called “unintended”. In other words they were not anticipated.

“For these reasons they will gather data from existing projects and situations to form theories. The accuracy gained from working at real scale and economy wide far outweighs any benefits on controlling variables at a smaller scale due to increase complexities with scale up.”

???? So many words to say so little. Forming theories is useless unless they can be researched to test their possible legitimacy.

Michael, before you lecture people on research methodology, it would be a good idea to learn about it yourself because on the evidence of this post you seem to be very confused.

Oh, I should point out… regarding the inefficiency of repeated truck-rolls to install FoD in the same street…

The Chorus NZ approach I believe is to announce and schedule well in advance the mass installation of FoD in stages, region by region… first they take orders from ISPs who take orders from residences… then they roll it out street by street in one hit…. so no need to keep coming back to the same street… unless of course the customer changes his mind afterwards… in which case he deserves to pay extra ;)

Assuming People never move or change residence or develop a single residential into a MDU (2 or more dwellings) and one of those new residents wants FOD, allowed for in the FTTP plan with redundant fibres.

You do realise, under Labor’s NBN, say they are rolling out FTTP to a particular suburb comprising 100 streets… they keep driving back to the suburb every morning for weeks or however long to get the job done… the workers don’t stay on site camping next to portaloos for the whole duration of the job? (Your wife would freak out.) So, this economies of scale argument about repeated truck rolls is totally exaggerated. Yes, that million dollar coffee machine at NBNco HQ is a fixed overhead and there are others… but they are small expenses in the context of the variable costs of rollout.

” they keep driving back to the suburb every morning for weeks or however long to get the job done”

Generally construction contractors travel to the job in their own time and at their own expense. They would be paid only for the time on the job.

They would certainly not be delivering heavy machinery to the job site each day and taking it back to “the depot” each night.
Doing a premises at a time though, this is exactly what they would be doing.

Just a small point, those ordering a fibre connection under the Coalition plan are more likely to be further from the closest node (by copper) than closer.

And before DT contradicts him/her-self to rush to chastise me, that doesn’t mean I assume those closer won’t want fibre. It’s simply odds.

The further out you are, on copper, the less performance you’ll see.

Equally, the further you are, the more it’s likely to cost, unless the Coalition caps costs. Which it currently doesn’t appear to. That’s not an exaggeration. More cable, more time = more cost.

Also, whilst NBNco are likely to try and schedule multiple runs down any street, which will obviously be a good thing for install costs, it doesn’t mean there would automatically be some kind of averaged price.

So, whilst DT is keen to just sweep the install cost under the carpet because they would never order that filthy filthy fibre (nasty hobbitses) everyone else looking at the bill for an install, may not be quite so quick to judge.

Semantics over final averages aside, there will be a cost. So please by all means argue the exact number of times you’ll beat the dead horse; it’s still going to be getting a beating.

“During the development of the Coalition’s policy, his guys put together a comprehensive model for how FTTN would work in Australia, drawing on international examples and with access to local data from Telstra and other telcos etc. ”

Then why is it at odds with what is being said by experts here and overseas?

“He is a lot more informed than anyone in Labor when it comes to FTTN.”

Including the people in Labor who were provided with the comprehensive review of all the submissions by the various parties tendering to build an FTTN under Labor’s NBN Mk I?
The recommendations from which led them to the dumping of FTTN in favor of FTTP.

“Labor would tear such a thing to shreds.”
As I suspect would the industry experts.

“In comparison, Labor has merely taken that same $5k figure from BT OpenReach and pumped it around every miserable low-life MP/Senator marketing campaign around Australia, probably upon direction from Conroy’s office.”

Turnbull himself is on the record as saying that it could cost thousands of dollars (clearly more than two) to do an FTTP extension.
On ABC Radio National on April 8, Turnbull acknowledged that if Australians lived a kilometre away from a node, it could cost them “several thousand dollars” to pull fibre to their home.
“Several” is generally taken to mean around seven.
Independent sources from the Politifacts rating you quoted as a source in this very article put the upper cost as well over $10,000.
To Quote: Then there’s the high end. Dr Mark Gregory, an electrical and computer engineering expert at RMIT, told us that under the Coalition’s plan, the cost of fibre for some users could tally up to tens of thousands of dollars or more.

“I wouldn’t have a problem if the Labor literature said stuff like: “If you want fibre to the premises, under the Coalition’s policy you’ll be paying an extra $800 to $6,000 to get it hooked up. You won’t pay that fee under Labor.””
But that would also be untrue as independent sources put the up to cost well above even $6000, see previous comment.

“But that’s not what Labor’s saying. Labor is implying that FTTN = ADSL copper, which is most certainly untrue. ”
As untrue as you saying that Labor is saying this. Please point out a reference where Labor has said FTTN=ADSL?

“And it’s not giving a range of prices — it’s ONLY using the $5k figure.”
In fact Politifacts concedes that a range has been quoted by other Labor politicians. It is only ONE comment from ONE politician, Julia, that it is rating.
To Quote: But in each, the claim was followed by a sentence which qualified the figure as being, in reality, “up to $5000” – a pretty important distinction, and one the Prime Minister didn’t make in Tasmania.

“And in my professional opinion, these ads, and these kinds of statements from Conroy and other Labor MPs, are just plain misleading in the best case, and in the worse case, outright lies.”

And in my opinion, Labor’s commentary is likely to be closer to the mark than the vague assurances I have seen from the coalition.

It certainly does wonders for the agenda driven content of your rant to totally ignore a key feature of Coalition FoD scheme as outlined in their policy, co-funding of a FoD rollout by the NBN Co of 50%, you certainly don’t want any figures you randomly insert divided by two eh?

I like the quote of it could cost $10,000 for some users, why did you quote that extreme for, why not also quote that for others it might only be $500, because the emphasis is always on the extreme or above average , otherwise it doesn’t have the emotional impact required.

It is also interesting Labor use the phrase ‘up to $5000’, rather than ‘$5000 or less’, I guess it’s like advertising goods at $9.99, $19.99 etc, it’s a marketing gimmick.

“It certainly does wonders for the agenda driven content of your rant to totally ignore a key feature of Coalition FoD scheme as outlined in their policy, co-funding of a FoD rollout by the NBN Co of 50%, you certainly don’t want any figures you randomly insert divided by two eh?”

It certainly does wonders for your willful pushing of coalition policy when you ignore the fact that that policy says that the 50% co-funding applies to DEVELOPERS and NOT private individuals.

” like the quote of it could cost $10,000 for some users, why did you quote that extreme for, why not also quote that for others it might only be $500, because the emphasis is always on the extreme or above average , otherwise it doesn’t have the emotional impact required. ”

Because for the quote to be as low as $500 (significantly lower than the lowest BT price), the node would have to be right outside the premises with the extension consisting of nothing more than a lead-in.

In fact Turnbull himself said that the longer runs (the most in need of an extension) could cost “several thousand dollars.

“Oh and ‘several thousand’ does not generally mean just seven at all.”
I said “around” not exactly seven otherwise you would just say seven.
Can we agree that it is MORE THAN A FEW thousand dollars using your own definition.

‘when you ignore the fact that that policy says that the 50% co-funding applies to DEVELOPERS and NOT private individuals.’

No the policy on co-funding on Page 11 does not say that at all, it doesn’t even use the word ‘developers’ (even in CAPS ),you just made that term up because you wanted artificial emphasis in pushing the ‘Coalition NBN is bad Labor NBN is good’ agenda.

What it does say is that ‘…….investors may have a interest in ownership and funding of fibre rollouts in certain areas……….’

A private individual or a group of individuals could qualify as investors, anyone that has money in a bank account, term deposit, managed fund, superannuation, shares etc etc are all investors.

You could get together with a group of neighbors who are like minded in wanting faster than FTTN and put a co-funded fibre rollout proposal together for co-funding consideration, or do it solo if you wish and come up with 50% of the funds post NBN Co quote.

‘Because for the quote to be as low as $500 (significantly lower than the lowest BT price), the node would have to be right outside the premises with the extension consisting of nothing more than a lead-in.’

So, by your own definition, you’re looking at a co-op type scenario to gain funding to offset deployments to an area whereby they invest? Is that actually an option, or are you just pontificating?

I could see a township perhaps doing this via council-led funding or some such, but it’d be the exception rather than the rule. There is potential for some big numbers depending on how far the nearest node is.

I think you’ll find that it’s primarily greenfields that this is aimed at; it encourages Telstra, Opticomm and so on to continue what they’re doing.

And I don’t have an issue with that at all. It’s good to see it. Really.

But lets call a spade a spade, and not a box of timtams that everyone is paying an equal share for. ;)

How is that interpreted to ADSL, both ADSL and FTTN use the old slow copper network and in Australia that network is of variable standard and the extent to which which it can be be determined as fit for purpose for FTTN .
On Q&A M.T was stating if pairs faulty it will be rectified, even if cables had to be replaced, so talking the cost first of fault location etc, then replacing either cable joints or cables when many customer run pipes are already full. Obsessive to the extreme against FTTP in residential even if costs over the long term are much higher. WTF ideology to the point of verging on lunacy

But the Labor spin machine is all about never mentioning LNP ‘Fibre to the Node’, because it is too close naming wise to ‘Fibre to the Premise’, because in reality most punters don’t know or care what the difference is.

You have to install the idea that to get Coalition fibre you have to PAY MONEY, scare tactic 1, then to put more emphasis on what PAYING MONEY actual means, say it could cost up to $5000 , scare No 2.

To doubly sure the punter gets the scare message correct you put YOU PAY in large font, ‘up to’ in small font then the $5000 in the same large font on the same line.

So you want them to get the message ‘YOU PAY $5000’ – they don’t really need to read the rest.

What the message should say is: ‘You Pay up to $5000 for Liberal FoD or you’re left on Liberal Fibre to the Node.’

You said that “You have to install the idea that to get Coalition fibre you have to PAY MONEY, scare tactic 1”

It’s not a scare tactic, it’s a simple fact, you will actually have to pay money to get FoD under the LBN and that cost may be up to (and is definitely not limited to) $5000 if Malcolm goes with a similar scheme to the BT pricing as he has indicated.

Which makes sense when you think about it, fibre can run up to 32 Km (though I suspect the only person that could afford that would be one of the miners).

“You have to install the idea that to get Coalition fibre you have to PAY MONEY, scare tactic 1..”

So you’re saying you don’t have to pay for Fibre on Demand under a Coalition lead FTTN build?

Because I’m pretty darn sure Mr Turnbull has indicated there is a cost. Pretending it’s a scare tactic, when folks are stating we can all happily pay for FoD, if we don’t like copper, is incongruous at best.

You may not agree with the estimates. That’s fine. But there is still a cost. No matter how you want to frame it.

There’s a cost for the current NBN too. Only the end consumer doesn’t have to wear it up front.

“No the policy on co-funding on Page 11 does not say that at all, it doesn’t even use the word ‘developers’ (even in CAPS ),you just made that term up because you wanted artificial emphasis in pushing the ‘Coalition NBN is bad Labor NBN is good’ agenda.

What it does say is that ‘…….investors may have a interest in ownership and funding of fibre rollouts in certain areas……….’”

Ok, I was commenting on the policy from memory. Not being a paid employee of the Liberal Party I don’t actually have their policy in front of me while I sit at the keyboard 24 hours a day.
Doesn’t change the effect of what I said. I own a number of assets that return an income to me. That does not make me an investor in the fibre roll-out. For that, I would have to be putting in money into the fibre extension with the intent of making an income from that fibre extension in return.

“You could get together with a group of neighbors who are like minded in wanting faster than FTTN and put a co-funded fibre rollout proposal together for co-funding consideration, or do it solo if you wish and come up with 50% of the funds post NBN Co quote.”

Complete rubbish. If there is no intent to make money, you are not investing.

Renai has said before that most of the parties (even the Greens) read this site. In fact, Senator Scott Ludlam has posted here on occasion (and Renai verified he was “the real deal”), maybe some of the others post here too, under a nom de plume :)

And government equity as always been “the latest metric in vogue”, those against the NBN have always pointed to “government waste” and “tax payers dollars”.

No point in you trying to move the goal posts now the point is a lot weaker for the LBN and it’s real costs are becoming clearer..

‘ the point is a lot weaker for the LBN and it’s real costs are becoming clearer..’

Pro Labor NBN supporters making up Coalition policy figures on the run, and deliberately misquoting Coalition figures from the policy document is not the same as ‘it’s real costs are becoming clearer’.

Pro Labor NBN supporters making up Coalition policy figures on the run, and deliberately misquoting Coalition figures from the policy document is not the same as ‘it’s real costs are becoming clearer’.

Kinda hard to “make up” or “misquote” when it’s a straight copy & paste from the documents.

Here, I’ll do it again:

LBN: “The statement of expectations will specify a limit on the public capital available to NBNCo. This limit will be $29.5 billion.”

NBN: “For the purpose of the 2012-15 Corporate Plan, it is assumed that peak Government Equity will be $30.4 billion.”

That was from a far too long discussion we had on the funding topic and defining of where it was all coming from, so what has that got to do with your assertion that ‘ the point is a lot weaker for the LBN and it’s real costs are becoming clearer..’ which is the current point of yours I responded to?

You can play with silly semantics all day and night in desperate futile attempts to try and make Labor figures look good, you do that often, you stack argument comparing AVERAGE monthly Coalition prices with ONE price from ONE NBN RSP, and draw the laughable conclusion that this is undeniable proof the NBN is cheaper.

Then you have to try and eliminate the $44.1b figure that is the total funding requirement of the Labor NBN rollout where it stated in black & white in the latest Business plan, (it was increased from the 2010 Plan), because it doesn’t look good against the total funding requirement of the Coalition rollout direct from their plan which is $29.5b.

How do avoid mentioning the $44.1b? you keep repeating the Government equity PORTION of that figure as if it is the total and compare that with the Coalition total of $29.5b.

How do avoid mentioning the $44.1b? you keep repeating the Government equity PORTION of that figure as if it is the total and compare that with the Coalition total of $29.5b.

Because you have ignored the fact that Malcolm Turnbull has never, ever said that the total cost of their plan is $29.5 billion. He has said the total PUBLIC funds for the policy will not exceed $29.5 billion (see: http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/uncategorized/coalition-broadband-policy-frequently-asked-questions/ under the Heading: The Coalition has repeatedly stated…. – NOTE: these question were listed after their policy was released so it is the most current information we have and has constantly berated Labor for not “publicly capping” their public funds limit (since it raised from $27.5 billion to $30.4 billion between Corporate Plans). And that private debt may be raised beyond this is required.

We don’t avoid mentioning it. Both tinman_au and myself have said several times the total funding required for the NBN is $44.1 billion. But we’ve also stated the private debt section, as long as NBNCo. can return 7%, is irrelevant to the taxpayer. Therefore, the most useful cost metric is the public funds required, seeing as those are the only funds the “public” will ever have to contribute in any way.

Actually, your the one trying to “play with silly semantics all day and night”.

I was just pointing out the plain fact that while the NBN requires total funding of $44b, the government equity “taxpayer dollars” only makes up $30.4b of that.

You, however, keep doing the equivalent of verbal acrobatics in an attempt to make out that the government is paying the full total cost of the project (which is just plain and simply wrong at this point in time).

It isn’t semantics when one of the major claims that FTTH should not be run is that the government can’t afford it. Well the government contribution is the same. That is why the figure is mentioned. FTTH fits better with what MT wanted to happen too. He initially kept banging on about incentives to private enterprise to roll out a new Network. Well part of the FTTH plan is to have private enterorise put their money into it. He even had a go at Steve Dalby about not investing in FTTH (iiNet cannot in the initial stages). The Coalition plan doesn’t even mention any private investment. Maybe it’s because investors, like Turnbull, put there money into FTTH, not FTTN which, given it’s life would be worthless pretty soon.

If, according to the Minister for Infrastructure, “government equity contribution” is the appropriate measure to gauge cost and affordability and the lower the “govt equity contrib” the better, does that mean the ALP is in full support of private tollways, private hospitals, private universities and we should shut down public roads, hospitals and universities? Hmm… interesting…

I get the feeling Malcolm would make mincemeal of Albo in a real NBN debate…. ;)

I haven’t seen an official reason for it, but I suspect they want to take the “propeller head” aspect of it out of the debate and present a more “normal folks” point of view to it. The issues with it are, after all, problems that any large infrastructure project can run into (just like the BT roll-out of FTTN) and aren’t actually technology related.

““government equity contribution” is the appropriate measure to gauge cost and affordability and the lower the “govt equity contrib” the better, ”

The government has no objection to private hospitals, schools, toll roads etc as is clearly evidenced by their contribution to funding them.

It does NOT mean they are in favour, as the coalition appears to be, of giving away all the assets that have been funded from the public purse.

What the above phrase DOES mean is that, to the extent that they are able, government built infrastructure should be built in the most efficient and affordable manner possible consistent with delivery of the required level of service. To the extent to which they are able, with this in mind, they should be self funding.

I think I’ll stop using this site for unbiased information, until there is an article called “Liberals still peddling false FTTP build costs”. A $2000 or $3000 difference in on-demand-fibre, is nothing compared to the $94billion, $100billion bullshit statements. Where is the hard hitting article showing this falsehood?

Publishing different points of views is not a sign of bias, it is a sign of balance. Also, looking at the totality of the articles gives a better perspective than reacting to one you don’t agree with.

If anything, this site, in terms of respondents, is skewed towards a pro NBN position. Does this make it biased? No, all it shows that more people who support the NBN, (for a variety of reasons) post, on it.

‘ is nothing compared to the $94billion, $100billion bullshit statements. Where is the hard hitting article showing this falsehood?’

The $94 billion is not just pulled out of a hat , the Coalition in their policy and the white paper detail reasons backing up their figures as to why they think it will be $95b by build end date.

A hard hitting article needs to go through the Coalition reasons behind the assertion and come up with a conclusion that it is BS and why, with hopefully more facts behind it than political bias, as in it is Coalition policy therefore by default it is BS, no analysis needed.

How about you do a little exercise. If you believe in the Coalition analysis so much, apply the same figures to there plan. Oh, include a few more that are unique to their plan. Cost of copper, cost of copper remediation, allowance for accelerated depreciation if the projections on internet speed they ignore are true, cost of ongoing copper maintenance, cost of upgrade to FTTH.

Gotta laugh at or feel pity for people who are so bogged down in ideology that they will whinge 24/7 that one side said $5k instead of saying “up to” $5k, whilst gladly not only accepting but openly promoting the $94B figure picked purely out of thin air, to fit within MT’s previous “our policy will cost 1/3 of the current NBN claims”.

“A hard hitting article needs to go through the Coalition reasons behind the assertion and come up with a conclusion that it is BS and why”

There have been many articles (the hard hitting wasn’t needed) that have shown that the figure was based on everything that could go wrong would.

Here is a challenge for you. Show us one prediction in the coalition policy that is looking at the worst possible scenario. I’ll even give you some hint. Cost of the copper, state of the copper, number of premises were copper is not suitable, time needed to negotiate with Telstra, time to re-design the network… Now that should make it easier for you to pick one.

You obviously are too blinded by love (political love that is) to see what is happening. One policy with everything going wrong, at once (!), and another straight out of dreamland, with everything happening without a hick up and Australia being a perfect replica of the Uk. See, we don’t need a hard hitting article, what we need is less fools in love.

What allot of people don’t realise is that the NBN is funded through the issuing of Australian government bonds, so the Australia government offers investors these bonds at an interest rate. And with the profit projections from the NBN it will be paid back to the investors in only a couple of years and effectively costs the Australian people nothing. This is allot more cost effective than the coalitions proposal.

If FTTH is such a good idea and FTTN such a stupid idea why is NBN trying to get MDU installations (ie apartments, units etc) fibre to the basement and use the existing internal building wiring to distribute from there?

Because its expensive, awkward and requires the cooperation of corporate bodies and multiple unit owners all at the same time.

Its not too difficult to imagine that FTTN solves similar issues on a suburban street level.

We don’t need a perfect solution, but we do need a solution we can work with now. To ask a business to pay for the “last mile” of fibre is not unreasonable (its tax deductible) and subsidies/interest free loans (for eg) could cover a lot of the population. Those people who want/use/need & can afford 100mbs could help pay for it.

If it is true that Tony Windsor doesn’t use a computer than it appears the future of telecommunications and the internet in Australia has been decided by someone who doesn’t have any understanding of the issues, the costs, the requirements or the current state of play of software and hardware. This would be a mistake.

Both hardware and software will develop, but to say that every house in Australia should be connected to 100mbs ASAP is nonsensical and ignores the very real costs associated with such a decision. To compound the idiocy the idea is we then decommission all of the working copper.

For a government/party that has made such a mess of so many programs – BER, insulation, live cattle exports, boats from Indonesia, Traveston Dam, to say “trust us, we can do this for $40billion” is one heck of a stretch of the imagination.

“If FTTH is such a good idea and FTTN such a stupid idea why is NBN trying to get MDU installations (ie apartments, units etc) fibre to the basement and use the existing internal building wiring to distribute from there?”
No, I think FTTB for MDUs is a good idea. Distances are way shorter, under 100m, sometimes way less, also if there is a problem with the copper the customer can do something to fix it. With FTTN you are at the mercy of copper you cannot fix yourself.

“Its not too difficult to imagine that FTTN solves similar issues on a suburban street level.”
Much greater distances, distances that would make the 1Gb obtainable on a lot of FTTB installations impossible. It limits the connection to a speed that is predicted obsolete by 2020 or before.

“Both hardware and software will develop, but to say that every house in Australia should be connected to 100mbs ASAP is nonsensical and ignores the very real costs associated with such a decision. To compound the idiocy the idea is we then decommission all of the working copper.”
Both parties agree it has to happen some day. It is the limiting factor on BB speed. There is only so much more that can be got out of it, each step getting progressively more expensive. It’s like trying to make a supercar with a Hyundai Accent as your starting point, sometimes it’s just better to dump the car and by a new one.

“BER, insulation”
Actually, if you look at them, they were both very successful. Beware of feeding from the MSM trough.

““trust us, we can do this for $40billion” is one heck of a stretch of the imagination.”
Why? It has been gone over multiple times and each time it has been judged as reasonable. The only people saying it is more is the Coalition. Their figures (that they don’t apply to their own costings, involves everything that could go wrong, going pretty badly wrong.

So FTTB is a good idea for MDUs, but FTTN for residential streets is not.

Well at least we agree that FTTB is a reasonable solution for higher density residential. No doubt NBN’s approach on this has been informed by the contractors quotes they have received to refit multi unit dwellings.

Ultimately it is what u get for your $ spent that matters. FTTN is a staged rollout. FTTP is rolling out the whole thing in one hit.

If this were a road network we were talking about, FTTN would mean upgrading the highways and regional feeder roads.

OTOH FTTH would mean replacing the highways, the regional feeder roads, the suburban streets and then the driveway into the garage of every house in Australia. Then after that rip out the old highways and roads so they can’t be reused.

It doesn’t make sense to me- particularly when I know that my Aunt will never use a computer let alone need a 1Gbs inet link. There are a lot of households in Australia who will not need these speeds.

We were talked into installing a NBN sat link and the installer who came onsite ripped out the 1/1Mbs fixed radio link we had used for years even though we wanted to compare the two technologies. Guess what- we found VoIP unuseable over NBN sat due to latency and couldn’t go back on the radio.

The NBN has always been FttP, as such FttB (although of course still using ‘obsolete’ copper) isn’t as good as having full fibre to one’s living space… it still comes under the banner of FttP and is superior to FttN.

But the same argument could be made in reverse… if the Coalition can see full fibre is and will be in future needed in greenfields and ergo will roll out FttP in greenfields, why (apart from blind political opposition) when the government funding/costs of each plan are very similar ($29.5B vs. $30.4B iirc) would they not just roll out FttP and be done with it?

Using you road analogy, do you think it’s wise to surface roads with asphalt but only do 90% of each road and leave the last 10% of each road dirt? Not only that, but that last 10% dirt is owned by someone else who can (theoretically) hold you to ransom. This is the better analogy relating to FttN. Your arterial/backstreet analogy is flawed because you suggest the roads are fully completed when they aren’t, the main street still has the last mile dirt as do the lesser roads… In fact IMO, your analogy better suits the current NBN as, the main arterial roads are fully completed with FttP and the lesser used roads completed but with wireless/satellite…

Also IMO, your Aunt analogy is flawed, as she won’t always live there and going by your description, connecting FttN would be just as much a waste. So again I reiterate the government costs for both plans are almost identical, why not just do it properly?

I seriously (again apart from political ideology) can’t see why people would chose 2nd best FttN (using Telstra owned obsolete copper) when it will be fully obsolete around the time it’s finished (as recognised by most) and complain when a government actually wants to provide technological advancement for Australians, at almost the same government cost of the lesser choice… :/

The NBN has always been FttP, as such FttB (although of course still using ‘obsolete’ copper) isn’t as good as having full fibre to one’s living space… it still comes under the banner of FttP and is superior to FttN.

Exactly. FTTB may not be FTTP, but it’s the next best thing and a lot faster than FTTN.

I think the problem you have is this:“Ultimately it is what u get for your $ spent that matters. FTTN is a staged rollout. FTTP is rolling out the whole thing in one hit.”.

FTTN is a staged rollout; which increases the cost of the copper network (installation of nodes, installation of battery backup and installation and running cost of power). All whilst costing the same amount as FTTP.

I get it; that right now we don’t need to give everyone 1 gigabit, but why save 1 billion dollars to install a network that can’t even provide 100 megabits?

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